Word: kabul
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...about it. Khaled Hosseini did it backward. He wrote the runaway best-seller The Kite Runner first, about an Afghan living in California who returns home to redeem a moment of cowardice from his childhood. Only in 2003, when the book was already done, did Hosseini go back to Kabul, the city where he was born. He hadn't seen it in 27 years...
Rodriguez was a disaster at disaster relief, but she brought along some tools that proved providential. "I never travel without my scissors," she says in The Kabul Beauty School, her amusing, inspiring account of good intentions gone platinum, with streaks. Rodriguez had worked as a beautician in Michigan, and when word of her skills got out, fellow aid workers besieged her for haircuts. Before long, she realized her real destiny was training Afghanistan's oppressed, burqa-encased women to support themselves as hairdressers...
With funds from a local NGO, Rodriguez helped open the Kabul Beauty School on the grounds of the Ministry of Women's Affairs. Applicants thronged the gates, and soon the first class of 24 women - some hadn't left their homes in months - were learning the finer points of highlighting, manicuring and waxing. For supplies, Rodriguez called the U.S. toll-free number on a jar of Paul Mitchell styling gel, got through to owner John Paul DeJoria, and before long a truckload of shampoos, gels, sprays and other essentials turned up at her door. Estée Lauder and Vogue...
What propels The Kabul Beauty School are the stories of its students. One of them faces shame and possible death because her husband-to-be is about to discover, on their wedding night, that she's not a virgin. (Rodriguez helps out with blood from her own finger, cleverly repackaged.) A young woman's husband insists she show her obedience by sleeping with other men; it turns out he's a pimp, and she narrowly avoids a lifetime of prostitution. Indeed, hardly a page goes by without somebody collapsing in sobs. Male readers especially will find the book sodden with...
...says. "I just got it done in Dubai, and now it's long and red." Rodriguez is counting on a new website (www.kabulbeautyschool.com) to bring in donations, as well as on "cutathons" at a handful of Paul Mitchell salons, which will offer $5 haircuts with proceeds going to the Kabul Beauty School. It should also help that Columbia Pictures just bought movie rights to her story. She notes modestly, "Sandra Bullock would be perfect to play...