The Afghan Beauty School

The NYTimes reports:

Beauty salons have long held a certain mythology. In books and films, they are depicted as oases where women can laugh and cry, kibitzing under dryers while dishing on life and love. But sometimes it is not all “Steel Magnolias.”

The latest addition to the salon genre comes via Afghanistan, this time in memoir form: Deborah Rodriguez’s “Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil.” The book, released April 10 by Random House, is a story of a flame-haired, cigarette-smoking, multiply-divorced Michigan hairdresser who travels to Afghanistan, falls in love with the country, and returns later to set up a beauty school.

Along the way, she helps a bride fake her virginity on her wedding night; saves the school from a hostile governmental takeover; punches a man who fondles her in a marketplace; and marries a former mujahideen fighter.

The book has been widely praised, hitting No. 10 on the New York Times best-seller list this week and receiving a “six figure” deal from Columbia Pictures. Publishers Weekly noted the book’s “terrific opening chapter — colorful, suspenseful, funny.” People magazine called it “a dishy but substantial read.”

And it is all that. Ms. Rodriguez (with her co-author, Kristin Ohlson) portrays herself as a brazen, well-intentioned naïf who just wants to do good. The sort of woman who defiantly drives the streets of Kabul. The kind of person who marries a man she has known for 20 days, though they don’t speak the same language and he has a wife and seven children in Saudi Arabia.

She acknowledges her reputation at home in Michigan as “Crazy Deb.” “As in Crazy Deb with all the weird hairstyles and the long nails and the showgirl makeup,” she writes.

But Crazy Deb has raised the ire of six women who were involved at the founding of the Kabul Beauty School. The women say the book is filled with inaccuracies and inconsistencies. They argue that events did not unfold the way Ms. Rodriguez depicts them, and that she exaggerated her role in the formation of the school.

Though Random House notes on the copyright page that some personal, place and organization names have been changed, and some chronological details adjusted, the women believe that the discrepancies are too vast to call the book a memoir. They even question whether the stories Ms. Rodriguez tells about Afghan women — disturbing, heartbreaking tales of abuse — are real.

And they object to Ms. Rodriguez’s explanation of how she came to be in charge of the school, as she is today. They say that, instead of being its savior, as she represents, she plotted to move the school from the Women’s Ministry to the house she shares with her Afghan/Uzbek husband, Sher (called Sam in the book). And, they said, she did it for personal gain.

“She couldn’t have a for-profit business at the ministry,” said Patricia O’Connor, 42, one of the school’s founders.

Ms. Rodriguez has clearly not perpetrated anything as egregious as, say, James Frey, who fabricated chunks of his best-selling book, “A Million Little Pieces.” Yet the criticisms raise questions: How close to the truth must a memoir be?

Ms. Rodriguez adamantly defends her account. “This is my story,” she said.

Ms. Rodriguez and her critics agree on some basic facts, which were also established in a documentary, “The Beauty Academy of Kabul,” which chronicled the school’s first year: The idea came from Mary MacMakin, an American who had lived in Afghanistan for more than 25 years, who was the subject of a March 2001 Vogue article. Ms. MacMakin, now 78, suggested to Terri Grauel, the stylist on the photo shoot, that learning hairdressing and makeup techniques would help Afghan women gain financial independence and self-esteem.

Ms. Grauel enlisted the help of Ms. O’Connor, a beauty industry consultant, and together they rallied Vogue, Clairol, MAC Cosmetics and others, collecting mascaras, lipsticks, dyes and shampoos. Eventually, they hoped to take the program, which they called Beauty Without Borders, to women around the world.

With donations, they erected a building at the Afghan Women’s Ministry, an “oasis in the middle of chaos,” said Sheila McGurk, 54, the owner of a salon and spa in Alexandria, Va., and a teacher in the first group.

That is about when Ms. Rodriguez came into the picture. Arriving in Afghanistan in 2002, she determined that women in the post-Taliban era needed a place to congregate and feel beautiful: a school of their own. Soon, Ms. Rodriguez, back home with her husband, a traveling preacher, had a garage and storage unit worth of products donated by Paul Mitchell, she said in an interview Wednesday.

But when she learned about Beauty Without Borders, she called Ms. O’Connor and joined her group.

The first class started in August 2003, with 21 women and 6 rotating American volunteer teachers, including Ms. Rodriguez and three interpreters.

In November 2003, the students graduated and Ms. O’Connor and the others returned to the United States. The school was closed for winter. And that is when the alliance disintegrated.

According to Ms. O’Connor, she and the other women were back home desperately trying to raise cash.

But according to Ms. Rodriguez and Ms. MacMakin, the women’s minister was angry that the school was dormant too long while Ms. O’Connor was paid $5,000 a month.

Ms. O’Connor confirms that she was paid about $70,000 over two years, but said she contributed $40,000, and has the receipts to prove it.

Ms. Rodriguez writes only vaguely about these issues and never mentions Ms. O’Connor and some of the others, but she dramatically describes how she arrived back to resume her work at the school and found an eviction notice on the door and a gun at her back. To save the school, she wrote, she enlisted friends to help her sneak into the building to remove supplies and furniture. They moved them to a guesthouse she and her new husband had rented for $22,000.

Ms. O’Connor said there is no reason the Women’s Ministry would be unhappy. Further, she said, “If the Women’s Ministry wanted to run the school, why didn’t Debbie work with the Women’s Ministry?”

Ms. O’Connor said she was devastated, as were the others. Shaima Ali, 50, a Queens hairstylist who helped translate the school’s curriculum, said, “I left my home and business to do something good there and within three months everything was destroyed.”

Ms. McGurk said, “It makes Debbie out to be Mother Theresa. And it’s wrong.”

Calls and an e-mail message to the women’s minister, who is now governor of another region, went unanswered.

Still, there are other questions in Ms. Rodriguez’s book. For example, the opening chapter tells of “Roshanna,” a friend who had been raped and thus was no longer a virgin. Roshanna was terrified of her wedding night, when eager crowds await a bloody rag — the telltale sign of virginity.

Ms. Rodriguez sprung into action, whipping out nail clippers, cutting her finger, dripping blood on a handkerchief and instructing Roshanna to place it under a cushion. When the time came, she could swap it with another one. The next morning, she writes: “When I rush into the hallway, I see that Roshanna’s mother is wailing for joy. ‘Virgin!’ she shouts at me triumphantly, waving the handkerchief stained with my blood. ‘Virgin!’ ”

Sima Calkin, 51, an Afghan American living in Falls Church, Va., and former volunteer, questioned why Debbie, and not the mother, fixed the problem.

Ms. O’Connor said: “These women have been through gazillions of wars, and survived all sorts of unbelievable circumstances and this one thing they couldn’t handle?”

Roshanna figures in numerous scenes, but none of the women recalled ever having met anyone fitting her description. Ms. Rodriguez, when queried, said that while the Roshanna story was real, the details were not. The other women would not have known her, she explained, because she was a part of her “private life.”

The same applies to other women in the book. Jane von Mehren of Random House, the book’s editor, said the events were true, but they wanted to protect the women. “They can be stoned, thrown in jail, because of some of the things they did,” she said. “We in no way wanted to get them in trouble.”

When Ms. O’Connor, Ms. Grauel and Ms. McGurk first learned of the book they contacted Random House to voice their concern that the story be told accurately. Ms. Rodriguez does state in the book that Ms. Grauel “and some associates” had “galvanized the New York beauty industry to launch and support a school.” She also wrote: “I was actually relieved to find out that someone else with more clout and connections was working on the idea.”

But even many reviewers seem to have come away with the impression that Ms. Rodriguez was the founder. Typical is USA Today: “With contributions from hair-care companies and nonprofit groups, Rodriguez opened a salon and school where Afghan women could learn new skills.”

On April 12, NPR’s Diane Rehm conducted a live one-hour interview with Ms. Rodriguez, repeatedly referring to her as the school’s founder — until Ms. Calkin phoned in and asked Ms. Rodriguez why she hadn’t credited the other women. Ms. Rodriguez said later that she was inexperienced at doing interviews, which was why she didn’t contradict Ms. Rehm’s description of her.

Random House did not help the confusion, having sent out news releases describing Ms. Rodriguez as founder of the Kabul Beauty School. After being asked about it, Random House said the release was written before the manuscript arrived. The wording has since been changed to “runs.”

“There was no intention on the part of Random House to present Debbie as the founder of the school,” said Carol Schneider, a spokeswoman. “She wrote honestly about the school’s origins in the book and we as publishers have no reason to dissemble about that.”

Yet Ms. Rodriguez provides an incomplete history of the beauty school. In a memoir, was she obligated to do more?

Richard S. Pine, a literary agent and partner at InkWell Management LLC, in Manhattan, said she was not. “Journalists know about fact-checking,” he said. “Beauticians know about hair dye and shampoo.”

“It’s natural to expect that people with divergent backgrounds will approach telling their own story in very different ways,” he said.

One thing both camps agree on is that the real concern should be for Afghan women.

“There’s not a day that passes that I don’t think of those women and feel I deserted them,” Ms. McGurk said.

As for Ms. Rodriguez, after a 12-city book tour in the United States, she will return to Kabul and the beauty school, hair salon and coffeehouse she runs. She said some of the proceeds from the movie deal will go toward the school.

“I wanted the book to be about the women, not about me,” she said. “I’m just the voice.”