For me, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon’s The Dressmaker of Khair Khana is a journalistic field story masquerading as a feel good beach novel in the Oprah Book Club genre. That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy reading it, but I felt it warranted something more. While Lemmon’s storytelling is her strength–the way the book is organized is captivating–it also stops the book short from sending its message home: fact becomes fiction and hard realities become just a story. However, considering the polemic lately surrounding another “Afghanistan” book, Three Cups of Tea, make no mistake that The Dressmaker of Khair Khana has solid journalistic chops and remains based in fact.
The story follows the main character, Kamila, had just earned a teaching certificate and was ready to continue at university when the Taliban came to power in Kabul. While her parents and older brother left, Kamila, her sisters and her younger brother (who would wind up being the sisters’ mahram) stayed in Kabul in order to keep the family home. Kamila’s oldest sister, already married with children, also stayed in Kabul, and she soon moves in to the family home. As savings run out, Kamila realizes that she needs to work, but how can women work under the Taliban? Kamila decides to learn how to sew, with the help of her oldest sister who is a talented seamstress in her own right.
Her business plan was simple: deliver what was promised and on time, and be the best. Within months, demand exceeded what their family was able to supply, and their business was making enough to have employees. Their first employee is a widow dependent on her brother-in-law. Thus begins the story of how one girl’s idea helped an entire community of women raise up by themselves. The story goes through Kamila’s twists and turns in avoiding the wrath of the Taliban and becoming a successful entrepreneur where her innate business sense saved her every time, even when taking chances.
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