Social change -- and a haircut -- care of Kabul's trendsetting salon
Heidi Benson
Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil
DEBORAH RODRIGUEZ. Random, $24.95 (288p) ISBN 978-1-4000-6559-3
When
Deborah Rodriguez, a Michigan mother of two, visited Afghanistan in 2001 as
a part of a disaster-relief tour arranged by a Christian humanitarian group,
she wondered what she had to offer the citizens of a country who had
weathered five long years of Taliban control. She soon found out.
When she and her traveling companions -- doctors, nurses and therapists -- were introduced to an audience of Westerners living in Kabul, she was startled to hear wild applause when the crowd heard that Rodriguez was a hairdresser.
"There isn't a decent haircut within a day's drive of Kabul," one woman said. The Taliban, with its strict interpretation of Islamic law, had shuttered the city's many salons.
"We have literally risked our lives for highlights," said another, telling of treacherous excursions over the Khyber Pass into Pakistan.
Relieved to find a demand for her talents, Rodriguez cut a lot of hair during that first visit. And, with her larger-than-life personality, she had a talent for making friends with the local people, even as she struggled to understand the language and customs. She eventually made her home in Kabul and found a way to make a lasting contribution.
Today, she runs both a salon and a nonprofit school in the Afghan capital that has helped hundreds of women learn life-sustaining skills and gain economic independence.
Her story is told in "Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil," a book co-written with Kristin Ohlson and published by Random House this month.
"I created my own world," Rodriguez said, when asked how she gained a footing in a culture so different from her own. "Most of the foreigners in Kabul don't see a tenth of what I see. They go to their offices and then home to their foreign compounds. I live Afghanistan all the time."
Since moving to Kabul, her life has altered dramatically. She and her American husband have divorced. Her college-aged sons, who now live with their father, have crossed half the globe to visit. She has made lifelong friends. And, she has remarried; her husband is Afghan. She is his second wife; he has another in Saudi Arabia.
Throughout her time in Afghanistan, Rodriguez kept a diary -- in the form of lengthy e-mails sent to family and friends -- on which the book is based. "I was trying to document everything that was going on," she said. Meanwhile, a girlfriend saved the e-mails on a CD. "One day, she presented me with it and said, 'Deb, here's your book.' "
Now, that book allows her to describe her love for Afghanistan and her desire to change the lot of its long-suppressed women. "As soon as I set my foot on this soil, I knew I'd somehow managed to come home," she writes, referring to Kabul. "I've been renewed by the spirit of this place and roused by its challenges."
Rodriguez is quick to note that her school's 182 graduates have seen their incomes grow significantly. Education for women was banned under the Taliban, so many Afghan women are illiterate. Many are war widows, or are otherwise isolated or shunned by society, and without a source of income.
With beauty-school skills -- which include waxing (all body hair must be removed before a wedding, by Afghan custom) -- women who had earned $40 a month are now able to make $400 to $1,000 a month.
"It is the one and only industry in the country that women can own and operate without male influence," she said. "Women can do carpet weaving, chickens, eggs, tailoring -- but a man can interrupt that at any point."
The beauty school is an anomaly. "Men cannot see uncovered women. They are not allowed in the building," she said. "It's a sanctuary."
The book is filled with many personal stories, including that of one woman who came to the beauty school to learn Rodriguez's trade. Baseera, who entered an arranged marriage at 14, now has four children with her much-older husband. She was determined to avoid the poverty of her own youth. Her mother, unable to feed her children, was forced to send them away.
"Baseera's story broke my heart," Rodriguez writes. "No wonder she seemed like a sorrowful child. It was almost as if she was still the bewildered girl of 14 who wasn't ready to be an adult."
Life has never been easy in Afghanistan. Sitting at the crossroads of the ancient Silk Road, the country Rodriguez calls "the original melting pot" has seen centuries of conflict.
In May, when a U.S. military truck crashed into traffic in downtown Kabul, the city erupted in riots; eight people were killed and more than a hundred injured. In the midst of this, Rodriguez and her colleagues had to sneak women out of the beauty salon and into a nearby safe house. Taliban factions, which have returned to the country, are known to punish families of women found to be working -- by firing their husbands, or worse.
As she was writing the final pages of the book, the school and salon were still shuttered. But last week, Rodriguez was proud to offer an update. "We re-opened the salon and the school almost right away," she said proudly. "We didn't skip a beat."
Since the May riots, though, Rodriguez no longer walks in the street, even with a bodyguard. "Right now, we don't know who our enemy is," she said.
Though the fall of the Taliban in 2001 seemed to signal a better life for Afghan women, the possibility of equality seems distant. The fractious nation continues to be beset by dueling warlords as well as a mounting Taliban resurgence.
"It's gotten a hundred times worse this year, since the Taliban has regained a stronghold," Rodriguez said. "Right now, the Afghan women don't have a voice.
"Often, I'm their voice, with their husbands, with their doctors. They know they can stand behind me and I can make things happen."
Rodriguez's book will not be sold in Afghanistan, though it is being translated into at least 12 languages. Even with its success, she has no plans to return to the States.
"I can't leave until the Afghan women are heard."