'The little coffee shop of Kabul'

Author: Deborah Rodriguez

Publisher: Sphere / 2011

Pages: 388

Deborah Rodriguez is an American writer, hairdresser and humanitarian. She is famous for creating safe spaces that provide women with a way out of domestic violence and chaotic circumstances.

In 2001 she went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering aid after the fall of the Taliban.

There she helped found a beauty school that trained 200 women in the art of hairdressing, many going on to run their own salon, giving them the opportunity to start their own business and provide for their families. She later opened a coffee shop in Kabul.

In 2002 Rodriguez married an Afghan, Samer Mohammad Abdul Khan, who worked for Afghan warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum. At the time he had a wife in Saudi Arabia who became pregnant with his eighth child while he was married to Rodriguez. The marriage to Rodriguez was reported to be a happy one as late as April 2007, but soon after she had to flee Afghanistan because of threats against her young son.

Rodriguez wrote two best-selling books based on her experiences in Afghanistan, The Kabul beauty school and the book being reviewed today, The little coffee shop of Kabul.

In those days there was a rumour the novel was to become a movie with Sandra Bullock playing the lead.

As of 2015, Rodriguez lives in Mazatlan, Mexico where she is the owner of Tippy Toes Salon and Marrakech Spa and she set up Project Mariposa, providing funding for young women to attend beauty school, with the goal of helping them become independent and self-supporting.

Margarita Wednesdays, or The house on Carnaval Street, a book detailing her journey to remake her life after being forced to leave Afghanistan, was released in June 2014.

She continued to write - her later novels include The Zanzibar Wife and The Moroccan Daughter.

As of 2021, Rodriguez has been working to help 130 Afghans, including former staff and beauty school students, leave Afghanistan.

As president of the non-profit Oasis Rescue, she is raising money to support efforts by Afghans who are seeking to leave the country as well as those who have left and find themselves in need.

Some controversy has followed the publication of Kabul beauty school. Other women who were also involved in the funding of the school say the book is filled with inaccuracies and inconsistencies and that events did not unfold the way Rodriguez depicts them.

Some of the women who worked in the beauty school claimed that because of the publication of the book and the details it revealed about them their lives had been put in danger. Some also claimed that Rodriguez had not made good on promises of support and other help.

Rodriguez claims that she was careful to protect the identity of the people involved.

The action in this book takes place when the Russians had been kicked out and the Americans came back but the Taliban were coming in too.

In a little coffee shop, in one of the most dangerous places on earth, five very different women come together:

• Sunny, the proud proprietor, who needs an ingenious plan to keep her cafe and customers safe;
• Yazmina, a young pregnant woman stolen from her remote village and now abandoned on the street;
• Candace, an American who has left her husband for her Afghan lover;
• Isabel, a journalist with a secret that might keep her from the biggest story of her life; and
• Halajan, the 60-year-old mother, whose long-hidden love affair breaks all the rules.

Living a life which is getting more and more dangerous, the five experience the resilience of love.