FOR a while, Zahra Hossein thought her days of fear in Afghanistan were behind her as she looked forward to living the Californian dream.

Her “saviour” Debbie Rodriguez, an American hairdresser who founded a salon in Kabul and turned the story into a best-selling book, had rescued her from death threats in the Afghan capital and promised her a new life in San Francisco.

However, according to Hossein, she has been abandoned in India while Rodriguez, who drew on the private suffering of her salon girls for the book, has gone on to make a fortune.

The Kabul Beauty School tells how Rodriguez, 46, ran away to Kabul to escape a difficult marriage in Michigan, married a local warlord and started her salon to help oppressed Afghan women to learn unfamiliar arts from aromatherapy to Brazilian waxing.

Her book recounts the rapes and abuse that her trainees endured in the confinement of their homes and how she set them free by employing them in the salon. It celebrates their bravery, revealing how they fooled their husbands into believing they were virgins on their wedding night and how they avoided brutal marital sex thereafter.

Columbia Pictures has agreed to pay her $1m (£488,000) for the film rights and Sandra Bullock, the star of Miss Congeniality, will play Rodriguez. The film is expected to be one of the feel-good hits of next year.

For Hossein, 35, and the other salon girls, however, the suffering continues and they accuse Rodriguez of failing to come to their rescue.

It all began to go wrong last April when Rodriguez returned to Kabul from a book tour to discover that her husband, Haji Sher Mohammed, had been sexually harassing salon girls and plotting to steal her money.

She fled Kabul, leaving Hossein and the other girls to face her husband’s wrath, after diplomats warned that she would be kidnapped if she stayed.

Her husband discovered that Hossein had sounded the alarm about his scheming and threatened to kill her. She hid with friends until July when Rodriguez helped her to reach Delhi, where she promised she would take her to a new life in the United States.

Four months later Hossein is still in Delhi, sleeping on the floor of a tiny rooftop servants’ room. She has been told that unless Rodriguez comes forward to sponsor her travel to the United States, she will be forced to return to Kabul where she fears she will be killed.

“I feel Debbie has got rich on my story and the story of the other girls, but she has abandoned us,” she said last week. “My visa expires on December 9 and now no one will help me. If I go back, Sher will find me and kill me. They will rape me and kill me.”

The book has caused outrage in Afghanistan, where websites have revealed the salon girls’ true identities. They have been denounced as prostitutes who have soiled the reputation of Afghan women.

Hossein and Farah, her younger sister, were regarded with suspicion in Kabul where they lived with another sister and had no male relative to protect them. They were called “whores” by their neighbours and landlord.

In Rodriguez’s book, she describes how Hossein outraged her fellow students by dating a western boyfriend and how she feared her liberal views would get her into trouble.

Rodriguez believes that her estranged husband is the biggest threat to the girls and that he will kill Hossein if she returns. She denies abandoning them and says she could not secure a visa for the sisters to join her.

In an email to Hossein, Rodriguez said she had not abandoned them. She was waiting to sign a detailed contract which would release her $1m. “If the movie money comes, you will have enough money to help yourself,” she wrote.

“They’re being misled by people saying I’ve got all this money,” she said this weekend. “I’ve given them all my money and now I’ve only $2,200 left. I feel horrible. I don’t know how to get them a visa. I had a good opportunity to get them into Brazil but they didn’t want to go.”

An American diplomatic source said Rodriguez had put both the sisters and the US government in a difficult position. If the sisters were granted a visa to visit, once in America they could claim asylum and probably stay indefinitely. But because everyone concerned knew the girls would have no intention of returning, they could not be issued with a visa.

Rodriguez was well meaning but “naive”, the source said. “It’s a bizarre feature of contemporary life that people can fly into Kabul, marry a warlord, set up a beauty parlour, get a movie deal and fly off to another life. These girls are living in a suspended situation of great anxiety as a result of this book being published.” The anxiety shows on Hossein’s face. Visited last week, she was reading Rodriguez’s inscription on the sleeve of her copy of The Kabul Beauty School, and sobbing quietly.

The inscription reads: “Zahra, you are my sister forever. I will not rest until I know you are safe. I pray I will see you very soon in America with your sister.”

Rodriguez on why she went to Kabul

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