Women Under the Taliban

A school becomes a safe haven in Kabul.

KABUL BEAUTY SCHOOL

An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil

By Deborah Rodriguez

Random House. 275 pp. $24.95

Almost anywhere in the world, a beauty parlor is a sanctuary from the male world, a hive of gossip, a school of feminine wiles and fount of sage advice for jittery brides-to-be.

In Afghanistan, where war and religious oppression have long kept women socially isolated, and where displays of sensual allure became criminal offenses under Taliban rule in the 1990s, the reopening of beauty parlors after the Taliban regime fell in 2001 was a widely noted symbol of the country's democratic rebirth.

But when Deborah Rodriguez, an American hairdresser, decided to contribute to Afghan women's emancipation by establishing a beauty school in Kabul, her project exposed the constraints of conservative tradition and male-ruled culture that still trap many Afghan girls and women into lives of suffering and injustice.

As readers of her Kabul Beauty School watch the makeup being applied and the curls being coiffed, we also hear the confessions of Roshanna, a tearful young bride who is terrified that her in-laws will discover she is not a virgin -- a cardinal sin by Afghan standards -- when her consummation ceremony fails to produce a bloody sheet.

We also learn the story of Mina, forcibly married to an ugly old man in repayment of a debt, then later beaten, disowned and threatened with having her only child taken away because families are feuding over her dowry money.

These women, and many others, find in Rodriguez's classes both a temporary safe haven and the seeds of future emancipation. Inevitably, though, the school has to be shut down after it becomes a target of suspicious scrutiny and bureaucratic greed -- neighbors complain there is "too much laughter" inside, while officials try to confiscate a fortune in beauty products donated from the United States.

Kabul Beauty School is not a work of literature. Its writing is clunky in some spots, breezy in others, and the text is full of clichéd epiphanies about the hardships of Third World living. A good editor would have looked up how to spell "salaam aleikum" and taken out the author's whine about having to boil water on an old gas stove. Since the book's publication, a variety of people, including her former partners, have complained that it contains numerous inaccuracies and overplays the author's role in establishing the beauty school.

But the real-life victims we meet and the tortures they routinely endure give the book its power. No reader will fail to wince at the description of a bride forced to have every pubic hair plucked so she looks as young as possible for the groom. No reader will fail to be outraged at the image of a girl's scarred back and burned feet -- all punishments inflicted by her pious Taliban husband.

When Rodriguez describes Roshanna's wedding celebration in an ornate hotel, it is with compassion born of terrible insight. "She and her husband sit without touching, without smiling, like bride and groom mannequins propped in the chairs. . . . For a moment, it's hard to believe that this woman with the dead eyes and rigid body is my Roshanna. . . . I realize she is so stunned with fear that she can't do anything other than stare. I don't even see her breathing."

Rodriguez also takes a personal plunge into the minefield of Afghan romance by marrying a man she meets there. The subplot of that tempestuous bicultural relationship is revealing, but it also has a self-indulgently confessional quality. In contrast, her story of the beauty school and the Afghan women who found refuge there is an important testimonial to the stubborn misogyny of a country many earnest Westerners are trying so hard to change.

Pamela Constable, a Washington Post staff writer, has reported frequently from Afghanistan since 1998.