Kabul Beauty School : Deborah Rodriguez

Image Credit: Jo's Bookshelf

After more than a month, I am back here again. I have finally finished a book. Wow. Congratulate me! From start to finish. I crossed the finish line! Reading is so often an act of escape - but for me, it isn't. It is life. Not an escape from it. So when I fail to find life, I fail to read. Kind of bizarre even as I write it - and I am not sure it makes much sense to anyone, but there it is. These days instead I watch more movies. I have been watching a lot of World movies - and have been delighted with some of the movies I have seen.

Today, I have managed to crash my Ipod - not my fault - I did what it asked me to do, which is upgrade to the latest software - and well, only Apple can make a simple thing complex, crashing the entire hardware, and now it refuses to restore it even. What I have now is a dead pod, and I am so fuming. I don't know how Apple gets such rave reviews, but after using their Ipod Touch, I would be darned if I buy another Apple product again. It is as my Chinese teacher would say : very mafan! (troublesome).

That is probably not the word that Deborah Rodriguez would use to describe Afghanistan though. Kabul Beauty School was an interesting read. Starting a beauty salon in Afghanistan with the Taliban's echoes still filtering through - what could Deborah have been thinking? I think she thought courage. There is no doubt that she is one of the most courageous and craziest women around. A little excerpt from the blurb:

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.

As I read through the book, reading assorted little snippets of life in Afghanistan, and Deborah's equally courageous women, who defied tradition, and often abusive husbands to learn the beauty trade, and then work in a salon, I couldn't help but think how cushy my own life seems. There is much to admire in this book. Deborah is a skilled writer - and often some of the stories she recounts almost seem fictional. That is not to say they are false - it's just unbelievable the sort of things she has gone through. As a memoir, it scores. But as a story, it doesn't.

I was left wishing that I know more about the women - Deborah only gives us little 'stories' - see here, this happened, or look there, that happened. Once the incident is over the person is forgotten. There was no strict continuity - and it left me with precious little insight into the people of Afghanistan. And there is a darker side to it - some of the women portrayed in the book have spoken about threats to their lives after the book's publication. I am not sure what liberties Deborah took in writing about some of their lives - but it certainly must have caused pain to those who have been written about. There have been other complaints well - including allegations of inaccuracy and inconsistencies.

Sigh. Now, reading isn't easy either. Writing was anyway tough. Just what we do in life? Fight the long fight, and dream the long dream. That's as much as we can do. And write the long reviews...

Verdict : Flirting with goodness, but turned out to be merely passable in the end. 


Rating: 3/5