Kabul Beauty School

Kabul Beauty School PDF Author: Deborah Rodriguez
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588366073
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Soon after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001, Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering humanitarian aid to this war-torn nation. Surrounded by men and women whose skills–as doctors, nurses, and therapists–seemed eminently more practical than her own, Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother of two from Michigan, despaired of being of any real use. Yet she soon found she had a gift for befriending Afghans, and once her profession became known she was eagerly sought out by Westerners desperate for a good haircut and by Afghan women, who have a long and proud tradition of running their own beauty salons. Thus an idea was born. With the help of corporate and international sponsors, the Kabul Beauty School welcomed its first class in 2003. Well meaning but sometimes brazen, Rodriguez stumbled through language barriers, overstepped cultural customs, and constantly juggled the challenges of a postwar nation even as she learned how to empower her students to become their families’ breadwinners by learning the fundamentals of coloring techniques, haircutting, and makeup. Yet within the small haven of the beauty school, the line between teacher and student quickly blurred as these vibrant women shared with Rodriguez their stories and their hearts: the newlywed who faked her virginity on her wedding night, the twelve-year-old bride sold into marriage to pay her family’s debts, the Taliban member’s wife who pursued her training despite her husband’s constant beatings. Through these and other stories, Rodriguez found the strength to leave her own unhealthy marriage and allow herself to love again, Afghan style. With warmth and humor, Rodriguez details the lushness of a seemingly desolate region and reveals the magnificence behind the burqa. Kabul Beauty School is a remarkable tale of an extraordinary community of women who come together and learn the arts of perms, friendship, and freedom.

Kabul Beauty School

Kabul Beauty School PDF Author: Deborah Rodriguez
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1588366073
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book Here

Book Description
Soon after the fall of the Taliban, in 2001, Deborah Rodriguez went to Afghanistan as part of a group offering humanitarian aid to this war-torn nation. Surrounded by men and women whose skills–as doctors, nurses, and therapists–seemed eminently more practical than her own, Rodriguez, a hairdresser and mother of two from Michigan, despaired of being of any real use. Yet she soon found she had a gift for befriending Afghans, and once her profession became known she was eagerly sought out by Westerners desperate for a good haircut and by Afghan women, who have a long and proud tradition of running their own beauty salons. Thus an idea was born. With the help of corporate and international sponsors, the Kabul Beauty School welcomed its first class in 2003. Well meaning but sometimes brazen, Rodriguez stumbled through language barriers, overstepped cultural customs, and constantly juggled the challenges of a postwar nation even as she learned how to empower her students to become their families’ breadwinners by learning the fundamentals of coloring techniques, haircutting, and makeup. Yet within the small haven of the beauty school, the line between teacher and student quickly blurred as these vibrant women shared with Rodriguez their stories and their hearts: the newlywed who faked her virginity on her wedding night, the twelve-year-old bride sold into marriage to pay her family’s debts, the Taliban member’s wife who pursued her training despite her husband’s constant beatings. Through these and other stories, Rodriguez found the strength to leave her own unhealthy marriage and allow herself to love again, Afghan style. With warmth and humor, Rodriguez details the lushness of a seemingly desolate region and reveals the magnificence behind the burqa. Kabul Beauty School is a remarkable tale of an extraordinary community of women who come together and learn the arts of perms, friendship, and freedom.

Margarita Wednesdays

Margarita Wednesdays PDF Author: Deborah Rodriguez
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476710694
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
In answer to the question of what happened following her New York Times bestseller Kabul Beauty School, Deborah Rodriquez is back with a new memoir: “a brave and often hilarious tale of reinvention, told with pioneer woman brio and wicked humor” (Wendy Lawless, bestselling author of Chanel Bonfire). Irreverent, insightful, and blatantly honest, Deborah takes us along on her inspiring journey of self-discovery and renewal after she is forced to flee Afghanistan in 2007. She first lands in California, where she feels like a misfit teetering on the brink of sanity. Where was that fearless redhead who stared danger in the face back in Kabul? After being advised to commune with glowworms and sit in contemplation for one year, Rodriguez finally packs her life and her cat into her Mini Cooper and moves to a seaside town in Mexico. Despite having no plan, no friends, and no Spanish speaking skills, a determined Rodriguez soon finds herself swept up in a world where the music never stops and a new life can begin. Her adventures and misadventures among the expats and locals help lead the way to new love, new family, and a new sense of herself. In the magic of Mexico, she finds the hairdresser within, and builds the life she never knew was possible—a life on her own terms.

A Cup of Friendship

A Cup of Friendship PDF Author: Deborah Rodriguez
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
ISBN: 0345514750
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
Running a Kabul coffee shop that is patronized by ex-pats, American Sunny reaches out to a growing circle of new friends including a pregnant rape victim, a journalist with a painful secret, and a den mother who is engaged in a complicated affair.

An American Bride in Kabul

An American Bride in Kabul PDF Author: Phyllis Chesler
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1137365579
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
Few westerners will ever be able to understand Muslim or Afghan society unless they are part of a Muslim family. Twenty years old and in love, Phyllis Chesler, a Jewish-American girl from Brooklyn, embarked on an adventure that has lasted for more than a half-century. In 1961, when she arrived in Kabul with her Afghan bridegroom, authorities took away her American passport. Chesler was now the property of her husband's family and had no rights of citizenship. Back in Afghanistan, her husband, a wealthy, westernized foreign college student with dreams of reforming his country, reverted to traditional and tribal customs. Chesler found herself unexpectedly trapped in a posh polygamous family, with no chance of escape. She fought against her seclusion and lack of freedom, her Afghan family's attempts to convert her from Judaism to Islam, and her husband's wish to permanently tie her to the country through childbirth. Drawing upon her personal diaries, Chesler recounts her ordeal, the nature of gender apartheid—and her longing to explore this beautiful, ancient, and exotic country and culture. Chesler nearly died there but she managed to get out, returned to her studies in America, and became an author and an ardent activist for women's rights throughout the world. An American Bride in Kabul is the story of how a naïve American girl learned to see the world through eastern as well as western eyes and came to appreciate Enlightenment values. This dramatic tale re-creates a time gone by, a place that is no more, and shares the way in which Chesler turned adversity into a passion for world-wide social, educational, and political reform.

Forbidden Lessons in a Kabul Guesthouse

Forbidden Lessons in a Kabul Guesthouse PDF Author: Suraya Sadeed
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 1401342701
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
Includes a Reading Group Guide and Author Q&A From her first humanitarian visit to Afghanistan in 1994, Suraya Sadeed has been personally delivering relief and hope to Afghan orphans and refugees, to women and girls in inhuman situations deemed too dangerous for other aid workers or for journalists. Her memoir of these missions, Forbidden Lessons in a Kabul Guesthouse, is as unconventional as the woman who has lived it. This is no humanitarian missive; it is an adventure story with heart. To help the Afghan people, Suraya has flown in a helicopter piloted by a man who was stoned beyond reason. She has traveled through mountain passes on horseback alongside mules, teenage militiamen, and Afghan leaders. She has stared defiantly into the eyes of members of the Taliban and of the Mujahideen who were determined to slow or stop her. She has hidden and carried $100,000 in aid, strapped to her stomach, into ruined villages. She has built clinics. She has created secret schools for Afghan girls. She has dedicated the second half of her life to the education and welfare of Afghan women and children, founding the organization Help the Afghan Children (HTAC) to fund her efforts. Suraya was born the daughter of the governor of Kabul amid grand walls, beautiful gardens, and peace. In the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, she fled to the United States with her husband, their young daughter, their I-94 papers, and little else. In America, she became the workaholic owner of a prosperous real estate company, enjoying all the worldly comforts anyone could want, but when a personal tragedy struck in the early 1990s, Suraya seriously questioned how she was living and soon sharply changed the direction of her life. Now, in Forbidden Lessons in a Kabul Guesthouse, she shares her story of passion, courage, and love, painting a complex portrait of Afghanistan, its people, and its foreign visitors that defies every stereotype and invites us all to contribute to the lives of others and to hope.

The Soil Will Save Us

The Soil Will Save Us PDF Author: Kristin Ohlson
Publisher: Rodale
ISBN: 1609615549
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Thousands of years of poor farming and ranching practices—and, especially, modern industrial agriculture—have led to the loss of up to 80 percent of carbon from the world’s soils. That carbon is now floating in the atmosphere, and even if we stopped using fossil fuels today, it would continue warming the planet. In The Soil Will Save Us, journalist and bestselling author Kristin Ohlson makes an elegantly argued, passionate case for "our great green hope"—a way in which we can not only heal the land but also turn atmospheric carbon into beneficial soil carbon—and potentially reverse global warming. As the granddaughter of farmers and the daughter of avid gardeners, Ohlson has long had an appreciation for the soil. A chance conversation with a local chef led her to the crossroads of science, farming, food, and environmentalism and the discovery of the only significant way to remove carbon dioxide from the air—an ecological approach that tends not only to plants and animals but also to the vast population of underground microorganisms that fix carbon in the soil. Ohlson introduces the visionaries—scientists, farmers, ranchers, and landscapers—who are figuring out in the lab and on the ground how to build healthy soil, which solves myriad problems: drought, erosion, air and water pollution, and food quality, as well as climate change. Her discoveries and vivid storytelling will revolutionize the way we think about our food, our landscapes, our plants, and our relationship to Earth.

The Red Leather Diary

The Red Leather Diary PDF Author: Lily Koppel
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061827495
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
“A world straight from the pages of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel . . . An extraordinary story about coming of age . . . and discovering who you are.” —Parade Rescued from a Dumpster on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a discarded diary brings to life the glamorous, forgotten world of an extraordinary young woman . . . Opening the tarnished brass lock of a red leather diary found in the basement of a New York City apartment building, New York Times writer Lily Koppel embarked on a journey into the past. Compelled by the hopes and heartaches captured in the pages, Koppel set out to find the diary’s owner, a 90-year old woman named Florence. Eventually reunited with her diary, Florence ventured back to the girl she once was, rediscovering a lost self that burned with artistic fervor. Joining intimate interviews with original diary entries, The Red Leather Diary is an evocative and entrancing work that recreates the romance and glitter, sophistication and promise, of 1930s New York, bringing to life the true story of a precocious young woman who dared to follow her dreams. “Melds three life-affirming subjects—Florence Wolfson’s journal of life in 1930s Manhattan, Koppel’s discovery of it in a Dumpster decades later, and the meeting of the two women—into one enchanting memoir.” —Elle “[An] amazing story . . . A highbrow fairy tale . . . Much of the book’s emotional power derives from the drama of an old woman reclaiming a past that was almost lost to her . . . Koppel writes with flair.” —Chicago Tribune

The House on Carnaval Street

The House on Carnaval Street PDF Author: Deborah Rodriguez
Publisher: Random House Australia
ISBN: 0857981129
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
From Kabul to a home by the Mexican sea ... A life-affirming, sea-change memoir by the author of the international bestseller The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul. ‘I hadn’t been planning on making Mexico my new home, but the little house on the sea was all that I had left...’ When her family faces kidnap threats after the publication of her first book, Deborah Rodriguez is forced to flee Kabul, leaving behind her friends, her possessions, the beauty school she helped found and her two beloved businesses: a beauty salon and a coffee shop. But life proves no easier ‘back home’. After a year living on top of a mountain in the Napa Valley and teetering on the edge of sanity, Deborah makes a decision. One way or another she’s going to get the old Deb back. So, at the age of forty-nine, she packs her life and her cat Polly into her Mini Cooper and heads south to a pretty seaside town in Mexico. Home is now an unassuming little house on Carnaval Street. There she struggles to learn Spanish, works out with strippers and spends her Sunday nights watching clowns. And maybe – just maybe - the magic of Mexico will finally give her what she’s always dreamed of: a life on her own terms . . .

Return to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

Return to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul PDF Author: Deborah Rodriguez
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0751561479
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
'If you love The Kite Runner you'll love The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul' LOOK MAGAZINE Six women forever joined by a little cafe in Kabul SUNNY, former proprietor of the Little Coffee Shop and new owner of the Screaming Peacock vineyard. Can she handle the challenges of life on her own? YAZMINA, the young mother who now runs the cafe, until a terrifying event strikes at the heart of her family and business... LAYLA and KAT, Afghan teenagers in America, struggling to make sense of their place in the world... ZARA, about to be forced into a marriage which will have devastating consequences... These women are about to learn what HALAJAN, Yazmina's rebellious mother-in-law, has known all along: when the world as you know it disappears, you find a new way to live. Reuniting us with the much-loved cast of the international bestseller, The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul. Deborah Rodriguez tells an inspiring story of women's strength and courage in a changing world. The final chapter in Sunny and friends' heart-wrenching and uplifting story is available now. Order Farewell to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul to find out what happens next... ___ PRAISE FOR DEBORAH RODRIGUEZ: 'Deborah Rodriguez is brilliant at transporting her readers to far flung destinations' SUNDAY EXPRESS 'If you love The Kite Runner you'll love The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul. This compelling story of a cafe in the heart of Afghanistan, and the men and women who meet there, is full of heart and intelligence' LOOK MAGAZINE 'A brilliant story of strength and appreciation of difference that restores belief in humanity' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'An eye-opening and uplifting tale about sisterhood and survival' GRAZIA 'A heart-warming tale about female friendships' COSMOPOLITAN 'Captivating and addictive. The perfect book club read' TAKE A BREAK

Zanzibar Wife, The

Zanzibar Wife, The PDF Author: Deborah Rodriguez
Publisher: Random House Australia
ISBN: 0857988352
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Set both in Oman and on the Tanzanian island of Zanzibar, The Zanzibar Wifeis the story of three different women, each at a turning point in her life . . . Oman.The ancient land of frankincense, wind-swept deserts, craggy mountaintops and turquoise seas. A place where tales of evil spirits and eerie phenomena abound. Into this magical nation come three remarkable women, each facing a crossroad in her life. Rachel, a troubled American war photographer who is struggling to shed the trauma of her career for a simpler, gentler life. Now she has once again picked up her camera and is headed to Oman to cover a quite different story - for a glossy travel magazine. Ariana Khan,a bubbly British woman struggling to keep up with the glitz of Dubai and ready to give up on love. She has rashly volunteered as Rachel's 'fixer', a job she's never heard of in a country she knows nothing about. AndMiza, a young woman living far from her beloved homeland of Zanzibar. As the second wife of Tariq, an Omani man, she remains a secret from his terrifying 'other' wife, Maryam. Until one day, when Tariq fails to come home . . . As the three women journey together across this weird and wonderful land, they are forced to confront their darkest fears and their deepest wishes. Because here in Oman, things aren't always what they appear to be . . .