Shear insanity in 'Kabul Beauty School'

A hairdresser from Michigan uses her profession to improve the lot of Afghan women in this true-life account.

By Marjorie Kehe

from the April 24, 2007 edition

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Here's a wild idea for a truly madcap sitcom: Uproot a hairdresser named Deb from Holland, Mich., and ship her to Kabul, Afghanistan.

Make sure, of course, that she's enough of a character – an ex-prison guard with spiky red hair and long fingernails who's often seen pulling hard on a cigarette – to offend even those Afghans who don't support the Taliban. But don't forget that she'll also need a heart of gold and a soft-as-mush interior in order to interact feelingly with a different traumatized Afghan woman each week.

Too implausible, you say? Not at all. This is Deborah Rodriguez's actual life.

In Kabul Beauty School, Rodriguez (with the help of coauthor Kristin Ohlson) tells the utterly improbable but also genuinely moving story of how she traveled to Afghanistan to help after 9/11 and ended up with an Afghan husband (Sam, an Afghan businessman with another wife and eight children in Saudi Arabia) and a commitment to live in Kabul and train Afghan women to become beauty salon operators. [Editor's note : The original version mistakenly omitted coauthor Kristin Ohlson.]

Somehow Rodriguez, who certainly has the hairdresser's gift for entertaining and confidential gab, manages to make it all seem almost reasonable.

Although planted firmly in Michigan for most of her life, Rodriguez had a yearning for both a larger world and a higher purpose that led her to take disaster relief training two months before 9/11. Shortly thereafter she hears that aid workers are needed in Afghanistan and quickly signs up.

She imagines, she tells us, that she will spend a month "bandaging wounds, splinting broken limbs, clambering over rubble, and helping people who were still hiding from the Taliban climb into daylight."

The reality is that, once in Kabul, no one really knows what to do with her. Unlike the medics, engineers, and nutritionists with whom she had traveled, her skills serve no clear purpose in Kabul. Even worse, Rodriguez suspects, her colleagues, many of whom are affiliated with Christian churches, are uncomfortable with her appearance. Perhaps, they suggest, she had best stay indoors and pray for them.

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