“So this is like families of hairdressers.
“It was so wonderful because we trained over 200 women and a lot of these girls went on to train their own children,” Rodriguez said. “You know, fingernail polish, that was always one big issue for the Taliban,” she added.
Plus, they lost their income, not to mention that they’ve lost their livelihood,” Rodriguez explained. “You’re doing something that’s completely against what the Taliban thinks is good and that the Taliban thinks is against Islam and so they feel very vulnerable that way. Rodriguez is currently working to get about 80 people, including her staff and their families, out of Afghanistan. The training Rodriguez provided to so many young women has given them their livelihoods, but now that’s all gone with the Taliban’s control of the country. The Kabul Beauty School has been a beacon of opportunity for hundreds of women in Afghanistan. “They just thought that you can doll yourself up for your husband, but that’s it, not for parties … So it kind of stands for something that they’re opposed to. “Basically, they never did like hairdressers,” Rodriguez said. The Taliban has put many vulnerable women and their families at risk, and the group has been hunting down women who worked in beauty shops, Rodriquez said. 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.“The fear is that there’s going to be repercussions from people telling on them, ‘oh, you know she was at the beauty school’ or you know like if they ever had any enemies or ‘she was a hairdresser,’” Rodriguez told the Daily Caller News Foundation Friday. 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. Woven through the book are the stories of her students. 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.
Now, Rodriguez tells the story of the beauty school she founded and the vibrant women who were her students there. Deborah Rodriguez is one of the very few who lives life smack in the middle of Kabul. Most Westerners now working in Afghanistan spend their time tucked inside the wall of a military compound or embassy.
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