A Life Revealed : Seventeen Years After She Started out from the Cover of National Geographic, a Former Afghan Refugee Comes Face-To-Face with the World Once More
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A life revealed : seventeen years after she started out from the cover of National Geographic, a former afghan refugee comes face-to-face with the world once more Photographs· by Steve McCurry National Geographic Society • New York 2002 remembers the Inoinent. The photographer tool( her picture. She remembers her anger. The Then and now: As a girl magazine. Her eyes are sea green. man was a stranger. She had (above) she was photo They are haunted and haunting, never been photographed be graphed by Steve McCurry and in them you can read the fore. Until they met again 17 in a camp in Pakistan for a tragedy of a land drained by war. years later, she had not been story on Afghan refugees She became known around photographed since. that ran in the June 1985 National Geographic as the The photographer remembers GEOGRAPHIC. Today she is the "Afghan girl," and for 17 years the moment too. The light was mother of three daughters, no one knew her name. soft. The refugee camp in Paki including one-year-old Alia. In January a team from stan was a sea of tents. Inside the National Geographic Television school tent he noticed her first. Sensing her & Film's EXPLORER brought McCurry to shyness, he approached her last. She told him Pakistan to search for the girl with green he could take her picture. "I didn't think the eyes. They showed her picture around Nasir photograph of the girl would be different Bagh, the still standing refugee camp near from anything else I shot that day," he recalls Peshawar where the photograph had been of that morning in 1984 spent documenting made. A teacher from the school claimed to the ordeal of Afghanistan's refugees. know her name. A young woman named The portrait by Steve McCurry turned out Alam Bibi was located in a village nearby, but to be one of those images that sears the heart, McCurry decided it wasn't her. and in June 1985 it ran on the cover of this No, said a man who got wind of the search. By CATHY NEWMAN NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SE NIOR WAITER Photographs by STEVE McCURRY He knew the girl in the picture. A family portrait shows, has not softened. "She's had a They had lived at the camp from left to right, three hard life," said McCurry. "So together as children. She had year-old daughter Zahida, many here share her story." Con returned to Afghanistan years ago, husband Rahmat Gul, sider the numbers. Twenty-three he said, and now lived in the Sharbat Gula, Alia , and years of war, l.5 million killed, mountains near Tora Bora. He Sharbat's older brother, 3.5 million refugees: This is the would go get her. Kashar Khan. story of Afghanistan in the past It took three days for her to To help McCurry and quarter century. arrive. Her village is a six-hour the TV crew locate her, Now, consider this photograph drive and three-hour hike across elders from the Nasir of a young girl with sea green a border that swallows lives. Bagh refugee camp eyes. Her eyes challenge ours. When McCurry saw her walk into (right) circulated Most of all, they disturb. We the room, he thought to himself: McCurry's photograph. cannot turn away. This is her. Names have power, so let us speak of hers. "THERE IS NOT ONE FAMILY that has Her name is Sharbat Gula, and she is Pashtun, not eaten the bitterness of war;' a young that most warlike of Afghan tribes. It is said Afghan merchant said in the 1985 NATIONAL of the Pashtun that they are only at peace GEOGRAPHIC story that appeared with Sharbat's when they are at war, and her eyes-then and photograph on the cover. She was a child now-burn with ferocity. She is 28, perhaps when her country was caught in the jaws of 29, or even 30. No one, not even she, knows the Soviet invasion. A carpet of destruction for sure. Stories shift like sand in a place where smothered countless villages like hers. She was no records exist. perhaps six when Soviet bombing killed her Time and hardship have erased her youth. parents. By day the sky bled terror. At night Her skin looks like leather. The geometry of the dead were buried. And always, the sound her jaw has softened. The eyes still glare; that of planes, stabbing her with dread. "We left Afghanistan because of the fight hope;' said Yusufzai. "Each time, the Afghan ing;' said her brother, Kashar Khan, filling in people have found themselves betrayed the narrative of her life. He is a straight line by their leaders and by outsiders professing of a man with a raptor face and piercing eyes. to be their friends and saviors." "The Russians were everywhere. They were In the mid-1990s, during a lull in the fight killing people. We had no choice." ing, Sharbat Gula went home to her village Shepherded by their grandmother, he and in the foothills of mountains veiled by snow. his four sisters walked to Pakistan. For a week To live in this earthen-colored village at the they moved through mountains covered in end of a thread of path means to scratch out snow, begging for blankets to keep warm. an existence, nothing more. There are terraces "You never knew when the planes would planted with corn, wheat, and rice, some wal come;' he recalled. "We hid in caves:' nut trees, a stream that spills down the moun tain (except in times of drought), but no school, clinic, roads, or running water. Here is the bare out line of her day. She rises before sunrise and prays. She fetches water from the stream. She cooks, cleans, does laundry. She cares for her children; they are the center of her life. Robina is 13. Zahida is three. Alia, the baby, is one. A fourth daughter died in infancy. Sharbat has never known a happy day, her brother says, except perhaps the day of her marriage. Her husband, Rahmat Gul, is slight in build, The journey that began with the loss of with a smile like the gleam of a lantern at dusk. their parents and a trek across mountains She remembers being married at 13. No, he by foot ended in a refugee camp tent living says, she was 16. The match was arranged. with strangers. He lives in Peshawar (there are few jobs "Rural people like Sharbat find it difficult in Afghanistan) and works in a bakery. He to live in the cramped surroundings of a refu bears the burden of medical bills; the dollar a gee camp," explained Rahimullah Yusufzai, day he earns vanishes like smoke. Her asthma, a respected Pakistani journalist who acted as which cannot tolerate the heat and pollution interpreter for McCurry and the television of Peshawar in summer, limits her time in the crew. "There is no privacy. You live at the city and with her husband to the winter. The mercy of other people:' More than that, you. rest of the year she lives in the mountains. live at the mercy of the politics of other At the age of 13, Yusufzai, the journalist, countries. "The Russian invasion destroyed explained, she would have gone into purdah, our lives," her brother said. the secluded existence followed by many It is the ongoing tragedy of Afghanistan. Islamic women once they reach puberty. Invasion. Resistance. Invasion. Will it ever "Women vanish from the public eye;' he said. end? "Each change of government brings In the street she wears a plum-colored burka, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHER MARK THIESSEN lABOVE LEFT); ALEXANDRA BOULAT which walls her off from the world MORE ON OUR Wf;BSITE too late for her 13-year-old and from the eyes of any man daughter as well, Sharbat Gula SIGHTS & SOUNDS Immerse other than her husband. "It is a said. The two younger daughters yourself in the quest to find beautiful thing to wear, not a still have a chance. curse," she says. the "Afghan girl"' in this nar- rated multimedia special. Faced by questions, she retreats THE REU 10 between the Also view video from the into the black shawl wrapped woman with green eyes and the National Geograph ic around her face, as if by doing photographer was quiet. On EXPLORER show. (See local so she might will herself to evap the subject of married women, listings for repeat airings on orate. The eyes flash anger. It is cultural tradition is strict. She MSNBC and internationally riot her custom to subject herself must not look-and certainly on the National Geographic to the questions of strangers. must not smile-at a man who Channel.) Check out field Had she ever felt safe? is not her husband. She did not tales from the TV team and "No. But life under the Taliban smile at McCurry. Her expres Steve McCurry, and read the was better. At least there was peace sion, he said, was flat. She cannot June 1985 story at national and order." understand how her picture has geographic.com;ngm/0204. Had she ever seen the photo touched so many. She does not graph of herself as a girl? know the power of those eyes. "No." Such knife-thin odds. That she would be She can write her name, but cannot read. alive. That she could be found. That she could She harbors the hope of education for her endure such loss. Surely, in the face of such children.