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Posted on 03/13/2002 10:15:56 AM PST by ThePythonicCow
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For nearly two decades, National Geographic (news - web sites) has been flooded with requests for information about a beautiful Afghan teen-ager with piercing green eyes whose cover image became one of its most recognized photographs.
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"Every time I went there (to Afghanistan or Pakistan), I asked about her, but I never had any leads," freelance photographer Steve McCurry, who took the picture for National Geographic in 1984, told Reuters.
McCurry says hardly a day has gone by that people have not asked him about the young woman, whose name he did not take down when he took her picture for the January 1985 cover of National Geographic.
This January, he returned with a National Geographic team to the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan where he took the picture and found someone who said he grew up with the woman's brother.
"The refugee camp was set to close and so I knew this was my only chance to find her," said McCurry. "I couldn't believe it when the brother finally turned up with his sister. I knew immediately it was her."
The woman, who is now about 30 years old, was identified as Sharbat Gula. She remembered McCurry taking the picture but had never seen a copy of it and was surprised and embarrassed by all the attention it attracted.
Gula got married shortly after McCurry first saw her and had four daughters, one of whom died in infancy. She was repatriated from the camp in 1992 and returned to Afghanistan with her family.
Her life had been tough in Afghanistan and McCurry said she had struggled to survive.
"What the second picture shows is that she is still alive and survived quite well in fact ... but that pain and hardship is still written in her face. It is not a face of joy," he added.
NEW PHOTOS TAKEN
A conservative Pashtun, Gula sought her husband's permission to lift her veil to show her face for the latest photographs, which appear in National Geographic's April edition.
McCurry said he saw Gula as a representative of the plight of the Afghan people, who endured an extended war with the Soviet Union and the rise and fall of the Taliban.
"She's really emblematic of the Afghan spirit," he said, adding that a education fund had been set up by National Geographic for young Afghan girls.
National Geographic used several scientific methods to ensure they had found the right woman, including iris recognition in which the colored portion of the eye is examined.
No two human irises are the same and a direct match holds a near 100 percent probability of authenticity, National Geographic said. The woman's eyes were found to be a perfect match.
No, we're fooling ourselves that they are a civilized culture. I predict that Afghanistone will sink further into prehistoric savage "society", Taliban or not. It's the culture, stupid. (no offense with the stupid)
LOL!! You guys are killin' me! Have you two been looking in my play book?? I thought I was the only guy that employed those types of techniques.
It works for other body parts wink wink. I recall my older brother alerting me to this while I was in Junior High School. He pointed out young prospects based on what their older sisters looked like....itf you get what I mean.
I spent Monday evening with a man who was with an American contingent in Afghanistan. He told me of everything that was going on with the government, the people and the war. So you can think what you want about the Afghans, I know how it is from someone who was there less than a week ago.
Most of them, but the brainwashing for dollars has put masks on their natural looks.
Megga dittos
For this woman to even be alive, let alone raising a family under the conditions she must endure, is a testament to the strength of the human spirit. She has been tested her entire life in ways that we can't fully imagine. I doubt that many of these yahoos have her character. She was a gift to us then. She is a gift to us now.
Do you always confuse being clever with sounding like an idiot?
Instead of casting attention to her physical appearance, it seems better to thank God that after all these years she was there to be found, alive and healthy.
You are so correct-I remember seeing that pic in 1985,just out of High School and thinking 'Wow,if she was in America,guys would be be drooling over her'.Remember when that 1st Pic was taken,Both her parents were dead,so lighten up people,Geez! And the fact she has survived all these years in Afghanistan is simply a miracle!
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