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　　Soon after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001, Deborah Rodriguez

went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering humanitarian aid to

this war-torn nation. Surrounded by men and women whose skills–as

doctors, nurses, and therapists–seemed eminently more practical

than her own, Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother of two from

Michigan, despaired of being of any real use. Yet she soon found

she had a gift for befriending Afghans, and once her profession

became known she was eagerly sought out by Westerners desperate for

a good haircut and by Afghan women, who have a long and proud

tradition of running their own beauty salons. Thus an idea was

born.

With the help of corporate and international sponsors, the Kabul

Beauty School welcomed its first class in 2003. Well meaning but

sometimes brazen, Rodriguez stumbled through language barriers,

overstepped cultural customs, and constantly juggled the challenges

of a postwar nation even as she learned how to empower her students

to become their families’ breadwinners by learning the fundamentals

of coloring techniques, haircutting, and makeup.

Yet within the small haven of the beauty school, the line between

teacher and student quickly blurred as these vibrant women shared

with Rodriguez their stories and their hearts: the newlywed who

faked her virginity on her wedding night, the twelve-year-old bride

sold into marriage to pay her family’s debts, the Taliban member’s

wife who pursued her training despite her husband’s constant

beatings. Through these and other stories, Rodriguez found the

strength to leave her own unhealthy marriage and allow herself to

love again, Afghan style.

With warmth and humor, Rodriguez details the lushness of a

seemingly desolate region and reveals the magnificence behind the

burqa. Kabul Beauty School is a remarkable tale of an extraordinary

community of women who come together and learn the arts of perms,

friendship, and freedom.

From the Hardcover edition.

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　　Deborah Rodriguez has been as a hairdresser since 1979, except

for one brief stint when she worked as a corrections officer in her

hometown of Holland, Michigan. She currently directs the Kabul

Beauty School, the first modern beauty academy and training salon

in Afghanistan. Rodriguez also owns the Oasis Salon and the Cabul

Coffee House. She lives in Kabul with her Afghan husband.

　　From the Hardcover edition.

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　　Chapter 1

　　The women arrive at the salon just before eight in the morning.

If it were any other day, I’d still be in bed, trying to sink into

a few more minutes of sleep. I’d probably still be cursing the

neighbor’s rooster for waking me up again at dawn. I might even

still be groaning about the vegetable dealers who come down the

street at three in the morning with their noisy, horse-drawn

wagons, or the neighborhood mullah, who warbles out his long,

mournful call to prayer at four-thirty. But this is the day of

Roshanna’s engagement party, so I’m dressed and ready for work.

I’ve already had four cigarettes and two cups of instant coffee,

which I had to make by myself because the cook has not yet arrived.

This is more of a trial than you might think, since I’ve barely

learned how to boil water in Afghanistan. When I have to do it

myself, I put a lit wooden match on each of the burners of the

cranky old gas stove, turn one of the knobs, and back off to see

which of the burners explodes into flame. Then I settle a pot of

water there and pray that whatever bacteria are floating in the

Kabul water today are killed by the boiling.

　　The mother-in-law comes into the salon first, and we exchange the

traditional Afghan greeting: we clasp hands and kiss each other’s

cheeks three times. Roshanna is behind her, a tiny, awkward, blue

ghost wearing the traditional burqa that covers her, head to toe,

with only a small piece of netting for her to see out the front.

But the netting has been pulled crooked, across her nose, and she

bumps into the doorway. She laughs and flutters her arms inside the

billowing fabric, and two of her sisters-in-law help her navigate

her way through the door. Once inside, Roshanna snatches the burqa

off and drapes it over the top of one of the hair dryers.

　　“This was like Taliban days again,” she cries, because she hasn’t

worn the burqa since the Taliban were driven out of Kabul in the

fall of 2001. Roshanna usually wears clothes that she sews herself—

brilliant shalwar kameezes or saris in shades of orchid and peach,

lime green and peacock blue. Roshanna usually stands out like a

butterfly against the gray dustiness of Kabul and even against the

other women on the streets, in their mostly drab, dark clothing.

But today she observes the traditional behavior of a bride on the

day of her engagement party or wedding. She has left her parents’

house under cover of burqa and will emerge six hours later wearing

her body weight in eye shadow, false eyelashes the size of

sparrows, monumentally big hair, and clothes with more bling than a

Ferris wheel. In America, most people would associate this look

with drag queens sashaying off to a party with a 1950s prom theme.

Here in Afghanistan, for reasons I still don’t understand, this

look conveys the mystique of the virgin.

　　The cook arrives just behind the women, whispering that she’ll

make the tea, and Topekai, Baseera, and Bahar, the other

beauticians, rush into the salon and take off their head scarves.

Then we begin the joyful, gossipy, daylong ordeal of transforming

twenty-year-old Roshanna into a traditional Afghan bride. Most

salons would charge up to $250—about half the annual income for a

typical Afghan—for the bride’s services alone. But I am not only

Roshanna’s former teacher but also her best friend, even though I’m

more than twenty years older. She is my first and best friend in

Afghanistan. I love her dearly, so the salon services are just one

of my gifts to her.

　　We begin with the parts of Roshanna that no one will see tonight

except her husband. Traditional Afghans consider body hair to be

both ugly and unclean, so she must be stripped of all of it except

for the long, silky brown hair on her head and her eyebrows. There

can be no hair left on her arms, underarms, face, or privates. Her

body must be as soft and hairless as that of a prepubescent girl.

We lead Roshanna down the corridor to the waxing room—the only one

in Afghanistan, I might add—and she grimaces as she sits down on

the bed.

　　“You could have done it yourself at home,” I tease her, and the

others laugh. Many brides are either too modest or too fearful to

have their pubic hair removed by others in a salon, so they do it

at home—they either pull it out by hand or rip it out with chewing

gum. Either way, the process is brutally painful. Besides, it’s

hard to achieve the full Brazilian—every pubic hair plucked, front

and back— when you do it on your own, even if you’re one of the few

women in this country to own a large mirror, as Roshanna

does.

　　“At least you know your husband is somewhere doing this, too,”

Topekai says with a leer. My girls giggle at this reference to the

groom’s attention to his own naked body today. He also must remove

all of his body hair.

　　“But he only has to shave it off!” Roshanna wails, then blushes

and looks down. I know she doesn’t want to appear critical of her

new husband, whom she hasn’t yet met, in front of her

mother-in-law. She doesn’t want to give the older woman any reason

to find fault with her, and when Roshanna looks back up again, she

smiles at me anxiously.

　　But the mother-in-law seems not to have heard her. She has been

whispering outside the door with one of her daughters. When she

turns her attention back to the waxing room, she looks at Roshanna

with a proud, proprietary air.

　　The mother-in-law had picked Roshanna out for her son a little

more than a year after Roshanna graduated from the first class at

the Kabul Beauty School, in the fall of 2003, and opened her own

salon. The woman was a distant cousin who came in for a perm. She

admired this pretty, plucky, resourceful girl who had been

supporting her parents and the rest of her family ever since they

fled into Pakistan to escape the Taliban. After she left Roshanna’s

salon, she started asking around for further details about the

girl. She liked what she heard.

　　Roshanna’s father had been a doctor, and the family had led a

privileged life until they fled to Pakistan in 1998. There, he was

not allowed to practice medicine—a typical refugee story—and had to

work as a lowly shoeshine man. By the time they returned to Kabul,

he was in such ill health that he couldn’t practice medicine.

Still,

　　he staunchly carried out his fatherly duties by accompanying

Roshanna everywhere to watch over her. The mother-in-law had

detected no whiff of scandal about Roshanna, except perhaps her

friendship with me. Even that didn’t put her off, since foreign

women are not held to the same rigorous standards as Afghan women.

We are like another gender entirely, able to wander back and forth

between the two otherwise separate worlds of men and women; when we

do something outrageous, like reach out to shake a man’s hand, it’s

usually a forgivable and expected outrage. The mother-in-law may

even have regarded me as an asset, a connection to the wealth and

power of America, as nearly all Afghans assume Americans are rich.

And we are, all of us, at least in a material sense. Anyway, the

mother-in-law was determined to secure Roshanna as the first wife

for her elder son, an engineer living in Amsterdam. There was

nothing unusual about this. Nearly all first marriages in

Afghanistan are arranged, and it usually falls to the man’s mother

to select the right girl for him. He may take on a second or even

third wife later on, but that first virginal lamb is almost as much

his mother’s as his.

　　I see that Roshanna is faltering under her mother-in-law’s gaze,

and I pull all the other women away from the waxing room. “How

about highlights today?” I ask the mother-in-law. “My girls do

foiling better than anyone between here and New York City.”

　　“Better than in Dubai?” the mother-in-law asks.

　　“Better than in Dubai,” I say. “And a lot cheaper.”

　　Back in the main room of the salon, I make sure the curtains are

pulled tight so that no passing male can peek in to see the women

bareheaded. That’s the kind of thing that could get my salon and

the Kabul Beauty School itself closed down. I light candles so that

we can turn the overhead lights off. With all the power needed for

the machine that melts the wax, the facial lamps, the blow dryers,

and the other salon appliances, I don’t want to blow a fuse. I put

on a CD of Christmas carols. It’s the only one I can find, and they

won’t know the difference anyway. Then I settle the mother-in-law

and the members of the bridal party into their respective places,

one for a manicure, one for a pedicure, one to get her hair washed.

I make sure they all have tea and the latest outdated fashion

magazines from the States, then excuse myself with a cigarette. I

usually just go ahead and smoke in the salon, but the look on

Roshanna’s face just before I shut the door to the waxing room has

my heart racing. Because she has a terrible secret, and I’m the

only one who knows it—for now.

　　both engagement parties and weddings are lavish events in

Afghanistan. Families save money for years and even take on huge

debt to make these events as festive as possible, sparing no

expense. After all, this is a country with virtually no public

party life. There are no nightclubs, no concerts, only a few

restaurants—and the ones that have opened since the Taliban left

are frequented mostly by Westerners. There are a few movie

theaters, but it’s primarily men who go to them. If a woman happens

to show up, as I once did when I insisted that a male friend take

me, then she becomes the show, with every turban in the room turned

her way so that the men can gawk at her. There are just about no

venues where Afghan men and women dress up and mingle. They don’t

exactly mingle at engagement parties and weddings, either. At big

gatherings, the hundreds of men and ...

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书籍介绍

Soon after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001, Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering humanitarian aid to this war-torn nation. Surrounded by men and women whose skills–as doctors, nurses, and therapists–seemed eminently more practical than her own, Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother of two from Michigan, despaired of being of any real use. Yet she soon found she had a gift for befriending Afghans, and once her profession became known she was eagerly sought out by Westerners desperate for a good haircut and by Afghan women, who have a long and proud tradition of running their own beauty salons. Thus an idea was born.

With the help of corporate and international sponsors, the Kabul Beauty School welcomed its first class in 2003. Well meaning but sometimes brazen, Rodriguez stumbled through language barriers, overstepped cultural customs, and constantly juggled the challenges of a postwar nation even as she learned how to empower her students to become their families’ breadwinners by learning the fundamentals of coloring techniques, haircutting, and makeup.

Yet within the small haven of the beauty school, the line between teacher and student quickly blurred as these vibrant women shared with Rodriguez their stories and their hearts: the newlywed who faked her virginity on her wedding night, the twelve-year-old bride sold into marriage to pay her family’s debts, the Taliban member’s wife who pursued her training despite her husband’s constant beatings. Through these and other stories, Rodriguez found the strength to leave her own unhealthy marriage and allow herself to love again, Afghan style.

With warmth and humor, Rodriguez details the lushness of a seemingly desolate region and reveals the magnificence behind the burqa. Kabul Beauty School is a remarkable tale of an extraordinary community of women who come together and learn the arts of perms, friendship, and freedom.

From the Hardcover edition.