Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil - Deborah Rodriquez Audiobook

Written by Deborah Rodriquez
Read by Kristin Ohlson
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Release date: January 1, 2006
Duration: 08:59:36

Most Westerners now working in Afghanistan spend their time tucked inside the wall of a military compound or embassy. Deborah Rodriguez is one of the very few who lives life smack in the middle of Kabul. Debbie Rodriguez is a new kind of secular missionary.

She went to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban, planning to work as a nurse’s aide. But when her skills as a hairdresser were discovered, she found herself training young Afghan women in the trade. By learning a marketable skill, the women gained security, autonomy, and dignity

When Rodriguez opened the Kabul Beauty School, she not only empowered her students with a new sense of autonomy—in the strictly patriarchal culture, the beauty school proved a small haven—but also made some of the closest friends of her life. Woven through the book are the stories of her students. There is the newlywed who must fake her own virginity, the twelve-year-old bride who has been sold into marriage to pay her family’s debts, and the wife of a member of the Taliban who pursues her training despite her husband’s constant beatings. All of these women have a story to tell, and all of them bring their stories to the Kabul Beauty School, where, along with Rodriguez herself, they learn the art of perms, of friendship, and of freedom.