An American woman's Afghanistan adventure
Kabul Beauty School By Deborah Rodriguez. Random House, 275 pp., $24.95.
Janet Okoben
Kabul
Beauty School" should come packaged with a cheese cake. It's that well
suited for book clubs. I don't belong to a book club, not that I wouldn't love the dessert and discussion, in that order. Always a teacher's pet in group settings, I'm ready with the first question in the imaginary book club I've convened for "Kabul Beauty School."
How has the author, Deborah Rodriguez, not been killed?
Really. The woman lifted her burka and punched a guy in the face at a crowded bazaar. She hired a driver to traverse the Khyber Pass -- you know, the really dangerous one between Pakistan and Afghanistan -- loaded down with hair-removal wax and tequila. Surely these situations would have left her roughed up. Not that I wish her any ill, nor do I doubt her story, but a reader can't help but wonder what sort of divine intervention interceded for her to live long enough to fill 275 pages.
Rodriguez, a hairstylist from Holland, Mich., joined a wave of volunteers compelled to help out soon after Sept. 11. She has now made Afghanistan her permanent home.
Which brings me to my second burning question. How does someone from Michigan with two teenage children and two ex-husbands fall into an arranged marriage in Kabul?
Rodriguez plays it cool, contending that she was along for the ride when two friends offered to set her up with a man who could make it easier to navigate the country. The introduction went well, and Rodriguez casually mentions that the pair were married by a judge not long afterward. She is a decade older than hubby Sam, and he has a wife and many children back in Saudi Arabia. In a country so scarred by the Taliban's religious zealotry, Debbie and Sam rationalize their marriage by saying it was her first in Afghanistan and he had his wife's permission to take on a second wife.
The marketing for "Kabul Beauty School" mentions mailings to hair salons and cross-promotions with the beauty products manufacturer Paul Mitchell, but hair is the least of what is going on in this book. "Reading Lolita in Tehran" it most certainly is not. The book's spare, conversational writing, which can be credited to the Cleveland Heights ghostwriter Kristin Ohlson, reveals Afghanistan from a blue-collar American view. Rodriguez's naivete will either make you cringe or laugh, depending on how sensitive you are about our perception abroad.
The subtitle of the book, "An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil," might lead you to think Rodriguez is undercover. Nothing could be further from the truth. She responds to conservative arguments about what constitutes women's work with "What, are your legs broken?"
She tells of pulling women from squalor into the ranks of small-business owners. She provides aid workers a break from the grime of a third-world country, proving that even missionaries sometimes yearn for highlights.
The revelation in the pages is the way Rodriguez shows a nation where women are prized for their virginity above all, but where innocence is a distant memory. It is the insight of an outsider, but no less true because of it.
Rodriguez ends her book no more hopeful about Afghanistan's future than the day she arrived. But she has no regrets over all she has invested. Reading "Kabul Beauty School" is not a bad investment of time, either.
Okoben is an education reporter for The Plain Dealer.