Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez

And John Paul DeJoria, the owner of Paul Mitchell, called up and says, Deb, what are you doing? And I told him.

And I went into this whole spiel and basically asked them if they would be willing to help me. And so it was at that time I actually just got a bottle of Paul Mitchell shampoo and saw this 800 number, and their biggest mistake was, you know, leave a detailed message. RODRIGUEZ: Well, so when I came back from Afghanistan, you know, I knew I had to do something. MARTIN: How did you start, then, working with the Afghan women? I had a hard time sleeping, and I knew that I couldn't turn my back on them. So I just spent the day with them, and I was haunted by these women, and I couldn't get them out of me. It's about the size of a bathroom with a broken mirror, and the woman who was using scissors the size of hedge clippers and rolling perms with sticks and rubber bands. So that's when I started investigating the entire situation for hairdressing and was shocked when I went into a salon. Sticky notes were on my door every night. That's when I found out that I was actually, kind of, needed in that country. But then, when people found out that I was a hairdresser, that's when it just got crazy. Actually, I was - you know, I figured there would be something for me to do. MARTIN: So did you really intend to go and offer, you know, beauty services to just to the relief workers? Was that the plan? I said, yeah, but you didn't look at your hair.Īnd so I wound up actually begging a spot on the team, and I went to Afghanistan.

And they says, well, we, you know, we're medical. And it was doctors and nurses and I says, please, take me with - and they said, but you're a hairdresser. And the same team then went to Afghanistan.Īnd I was begging a place on the team. And I wound up training, and 9/11 happened and I was deployed out to Ground Zero, and I worked with the firefighters there. DEBORAH RODRIGUEZ (Author, 'Kabul Beauty School'): I'm a hairdresser by trade and I took a couple of weeks off and went to Chicago and took the (unintelligible) leave training. Rodriguez, and she joined us from her home in Michigan to tell us her story. Rodriguez before report surfaced that some of her book may be inaccurate. She chronicles her adventures in a memoir called 'Kabul Beauty School.' But that's what hairdresser Deborah Rodriguez did when she traveled there in 2002. Now, building a beauty salon is probably not the first thing most of us would think to do if we travel to Afghanistan. But now - a beauty school in Afghanistan? This is TELL ME MORE from NPR News.Ĭoming up, protests in Turkey.

Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez