Book Review: The Dressmaker of Khair Khana

'The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe'
Author: Gayle Tzemach Lemmon


Format: ARC
Published: Harper; Mar. 2011
Pages: 288
Genre: Nonfiction
Grade: B
Source: Publisher


Synopsis: In 2005, Lemmon went to Afghanistan on assignment for the Financial Times to write about women entrepreneurs. When she met a dressmaker named Kamila Sediqi, Lemmon knew she had her story. It's an exciting, engrossing one that reads like a novel, complete with moments of tension and triumph, plus well-researched detail on daily life in Kabul under Taliban rule. When that regime descended in 1996, it brought fear, violence, and restrictions: women must stay home, may not work, and must wear the chadri—a cloak, also known as a burqa, that covers the face and body—in public. After Sediqi's parents left the city to avoid being pressed into service, or worse, by the Taliban, it fell to her to support the family. Her story is at once familiar (she came up with an idea, procured clients, hired student workers, and learned as she went) and wholly different (she couldn't go anywhere without a male escort, had to use an assumed name with customers due to the threat of being found out and punished, and could fit in work on the sewing machine only when there was electricity). It's a fascinating story that touches on family, gender, business, and politics and offers inspiration through the resourceful, determined woman at its heart. 


My Take: When things were going down in Afghanistan there was no way for those of us in the US to not know what was going on. Personally, I found the whole war hard to swallow and so other than the headlines I didn't read more about it. That's not to say I am uninformed because news about the war in Afghanistan is everywhere and I read the newspaper everyday and watch the news, and it goes without saying that I support the troops. However, when I picked up Lemmon's Dressmaker of Khair Khana and it got into the finer points of the conflict and it's affect on Kabul's citizens, it was certainly enlightening for me.


If you are not someone who reads a lot of nonfiction books about war (me), I would recommend The Dressmaker of Khair Khana because it is a totally accessible, totally readable book about the affects of Taliban rule on its own citizens from a first-hand account. The book centers around Kamila, one of the older daughters of a very large Afghani family forced to stay under house-arrest once the Taliban moved into Kabul. Before that, the women were free to go to University and pursue jobs and the men were, of course free to as well. After the Taliban, the women couldn't do anything that would be perceived as being sexual, talking to another man, wearing clothes that exposed any skin or hair, and so basically they had to stay home non-stop. The men in Kamila's family, having been of a certain ethnicity, were concerned that they would be recruited for an army that they didn't support or convicted of war crimes they didn't commit so started to leave the country. Soon, with no bread winners around, you have no income coming in and with the women unable to even leave the home, what is a family to do? It painted quite the dire and incredibly frustrating picture. 


Kamila wasn't one to just sit around though and let life happen. She is a woman we can all admire and one I wish I could meet. At first, her sisters organize a neighborhood book swap. While, illegal, done in secret, it totally invigorates the neighborhood. However, reading books isn't going to pay the bills. That's when Kamila decides to take up dressmaking. Incredibly risky and denying the fact that she has no sewing skills, she enlists her older sister to teach her and starts up an underground business. This gives her family some spark back. To go beyond this of course would be to give too much more of the story away.


My only fault in this heart warming and fascinatingly realistic story was that it was a little predictable. I could kind of guess where it was going. However, I wanted to cheer so much for Kamila and her family that I still wanted to keep reading and I recommend you do too!

Cover Lust: I absolutely love this cover! The colors and the needle and thimble in the foreground are beautiful and totally fitting to the book.