Chance Encounters

At the moment that we stepped into the air-conditioned bus, we didn’t realize that we were risking our lives.  The bus hadn’t traveled far before images of Frida Kahlo’s crippling injuries from a bus accident flashed into my mind.  Our driver’s attitude propelled us at top speed down congested roads weaving through traffic, cutting off other buses and screeching around corners.  He momentarily slowed when he realized that the crunching noise was our bus and a car in an unfortunate encounter.  He thought better of stopping...and so we continued barreling down the road to Juarez, which we realized was not where we wanted to go.  We jumped out of our seats, raced down the steps, landed in the street and hailed a pulmonia, an open-air taxi resembling a golf cart, which also catapulted us at top speed, but closer to the ground, to the hair salon.  Concerned that I was late, I left Ken to negotiate with the driver and entered the tranquility of Tippy Toes Salon whose ad I had seen in an English language news magazine. 

I was delighted to be greeted in French, I have yet to discover who that was, offered a glass of wine, which I readily accepted, and escorted up three flights of stairs to an air conditioned boutique filled with objects d’art, textiles and gorgeous leather purses, all sourced from Mexico, the Middle East and Africa.  And oh yes, there was a small stack of books, “The Little Coffee Shop in Kabul” on the top shelf next to one upright copy of “Kabul Beauty School”, the New York Times bestseller that I read when it was first released.  An American woman with a pretty smile and easy laugh stood in front of a mirrored wall and next to the one hair chair.  She was expecting me. 

We chatted as she got down to the business of cutting my hair.  We discovered a shared interest in the education of women in Afghanistan.  I told her about my affiliation with the Alliance for International Women’s Rights for whom I taught English as a Second Language to a young Afghan woman via Skype. She told me about the beauty school that she established in Kabul, the first in the country. I soon realized that Deborah Rodriguez, the author of both books,  was not just cutting my hair but giving me one of the best cuts ever.  She was forced to leave Afghanistan and has set up shop in Mazatlan where she is offering at-risk girls the opportunity for training and employment in beauty services. 

Just what are the chances of two American women with a shared interest in the well being of Afghan women stumbling upon each other in a hair salon in Mazatlan?  It’s a small world.