This book was a must read as soon as I saw the cover. I’m crazy for memoirs, especially stories of women living overseas in a Muslim culture. Kabul Beauty School is the story of how Deborah Rodriguez, a hair dresser from Michigan, started a beauty school for Afghan women in the war-torn city.

When you think of Westerners going to help with the rebuilding of Afghanistan, you don’t put hair dressers at the top of the list, do you? That’s another alluring aspect of the book – what’s this mere hair dresser going to do to help? Rodriguez found herself asking that same question when she first arrived in Kabul on a team with doctors, nurses and engineers. Kabul Beauty School is Rodriguez’s story of what a mere hair dresser can do.

For those of you concerned with behavior from a Christian viewpoint: Rodriguez does drop an f-bomb (did I just write f-bomb on my blog?), she smokes a lot, and marries a man without really knowing him very well. Yet for all her faults, she really gave up a lot to help many Afghan women learn a valuable trade.

One part of Rodriguez’s story troubled me: she recounted how her church’s leaders told her to remain in a physically abusive marriage. I hate, hate, reading that kind of stuff. For shame on those leaders, if that is true. She did eventually get away from the husband, and that’s great, but those stories make Christians look ignorant. The lesson here – careful how you council women in your church, because you never know who’s going to write a best selling memoir.

Reading this book reminded me that many women in the world face oppression and don’t enjoy many of the freedoms I do on a daily basis. To get a taste of the Afghan culture, and how an American woman brought beauty into their lives, read Kabul Beauty School.

© 2008 Monica Brand | Paper Bridges