Free Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez

streaming, I finally stood and felt around for my head scarf. They led me over to the mirror, and I peered at myself. It was as if someone else—maybe someone in a Mardi Gras mask—was looking back at me.
    But I thanked the sisters over and over, using my little bit of Dari. “
Tashakur, tashakur,
” I said, bowing and holding their hands. We did three quick little air kisses on the cheeks, then I stumbled blindly back outside, where Daud gasped with admiration. My eyes leaked black kohl for the next three days, prompting all the Westerners who had been living in Kabul for a long time to ask me how I’d managed to get myself invited to an Afghan wedding so quickly.
    But aside from my weepy eyes, I was excited. It seemed that I had discovered the one thing I could do to help the Afghans—and only I, out of all the talented and dedicated Westerners I’d met here, could do it. I knew that I could help the Afghan women run better salons and make more money. I knew from my own experience as a hairdresser back home that a salon is a good business for a woman—especially if she has a bad husband.
    Unfortunately, I knew this all too well. I was still married to such a mean man that Afghanistan, then considered by many people to be the most dangerous place on earth, felt like paradise. All the time I had been married to him, my only salvation was that he had no idea how much money I made. I stashed it away, saving up for my freedom. I figured that the salon business would be even better for women in Afghanistan, where the men aren’t allowed to step inside the salons. They’d never see the cash changing hands or be able to tell the women how to run things. I asked Roshanna to tell me about other businesses that employed women. She told me about women she knew who wove carpets, sold eggs, worked in guesthouses and tailor shops and other places. Every one of these businesses was run by the woman’s father or husband or brother or distant uncle. I figured I could come back to Afghanistan with several suitcases of good hair care products and supplies, then hang around in the salons for a couple of weeks. I could teach the women whatever I knew and show them how to expand their services and make more money. I could also teach them the sanitation principles I’d learned in beauty school. I figured if someone was going to cry at a wedding, she could do it out of sentiment and not because of bacteria-laden kohl.
    When I mentioned my idea to an American friend who had been working for a nonprofit in Kabul for several years, he didn’t smirk. He thought I wasn’t thinking big enough! He told me that he thought I should open a beauty school in Kabul, and he said he’d try to help.
    When I mentioned my idea—now expanded to a school—to Roshanna, she threw her arms around me. “I want to be in your first class,” she said. “My father wants me to quit working for NGOs because some of the Afghan men make trouble for me. But if I have my own salon, I’ll be okay.”

    WITH THE IDEA for the beauty school, it seemed that all my dreams came together. I’d never been satisfied to be only a beautician, even though that’s a fine life. I’d always wanted to be part of something bigger and more meaningful—something that gave me the feeling I was helping to save the world.
    Of course, I love beauty salons. When I was seven years old, my mother opened her first salon right next to our house. I thought it was the most wonderful place on earth, with its sleek blond furniture and gold mirrors and that long row of hair dryers, like fat little spaceships getting ready to blast toward the moon. I thought the beauticians were the most gorgeous women on earth, all dressed up in their green hot pants and white go-go boots. I couldn’t wait until the day I could wear that uniform, too.
    It was the 1960s in Holland, Michigan, and all the ladies who came in had big, frosted hair, with a little additional elevation from their hairpieces.