The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul, by Deborah Rodriguez

Characters

Yazmina Layla – younger sister Najama – baby Sunny – owns coffee shop Bashir Hadi – cook and manager Ahmet – guard Halajan – Ahmet’s mother, lives next door, works in coffee shop, widow Jack Tommy Rashif – widower, loves Halajan Candace Appleton Wakil – boyfriend Isabel Hughes – English journalist Petr – Russian Abdul Khan – drug lord

For discussion:

NOTE: Page numbers are from paperback edition.

1. Discuss the various characters and their actions.  For example:
1. Sunny – her decision to stay in such a dangerous place
2. Candace – staying with Wakil and justifying it by thinking she is helping him with his school.  Should she have investigated more?
3. Halajan – trying to get rid of Najama
4. Isabel – sacrificing her life for Candace
5. Yazmina – what options did she have?
   
2. What did you think of Abdul Khan labeling Americans and other Westerners as hypocrites?  He said they make money from the sale of drugs but pay mullahs to say growing poppies is against the Koran (page 105).  Can you see his point?
   
3. Candace thought that the main reason wealthy women did good deeds was to make themselves feel important and that there was more prestige helping people in foreign countries as opposed to in their own country (page 110).  Does it matter if important work is getting done?
4. Tommy’s reason for not wanting to go get Layla was because there would be too many repercussions for too many people.  Was this a valid reason?  What do you think he should have done?
5. Were you surprised at how ignorant Ahmat was regarding Yazmina’s condition?  Were you surprised at how quickly his attitude changed?
6. Bashir Hadi told Sunny that Americans are shallow because his observations of them in the coffee shop show them, “...revealing your personal problems, …expect so much,…feel that you deserve good things,…whine and moan over little things” (page 239).  Can you see how he would have this opinion?  Is his opinion valid?
7. My favorite line in the book about Ahmat, “His heart saw gray when his brain saw only black and white” (page 214).  How did this transformation happen?  Who else in the novel started to see things that way?
8. Why was the title of the book changes from “A Cup of Friendship” to the current title?  Was the change positive or negative?
9. What did you learn or take away from this book?

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