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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.
I can't believe all of the posters who were expecting a Supermodel to emerge from the mountains of Tora Bora.
This was one of my favorite photographs when it came out. Everytime I saw it, I found myself just staring at it. I had never forgotten her image. For a while, I used it as my desktop image. That photo was so hauntingly beautiful.
After 9/11 when troops started going into Afghanistan, I found myself thinking again of this photo and wondering what had become of that poor girl. I had assumed she had long perished under Soviet hostilities, Taliban rule or just general harsh conditions of that lifestyle. I figured she would never be heard from again.
Yesterday's news completely floored me! I couldn't believe she had been found and positively identified!
She won't become rich. According to the National Geographic article she doesn't want to. She wants to return to anonymity. The article (look also here) says that she will be provided for.
Her life will never be the same though. It is simply a miracle that she has survived.
You'd be surprised. These people don't eat much candy or drink much sodapop. Before refined sugar became widely used, many people had very good teeth. Skulls found in England that are 1000 years old showed tooth decay to be relatively rare.
I didn't realize the picture of her on the cover of National Geographic dated back to the eighties; I thought it was a recent picture. I still see the beauty in her, and she was an absolutely striking natural beauty during her teen years.
Thanks for sharing the picture; it's touching.
This sounds rather far-fetched to me.
I know that professional photographers use high-quality equipment and film, but wouldn't a more detail close-up of the iris be necessary? Not just a portrait? I'd think too much detail would be lost to perform iris recognition. (Although she DOES have very striking eyes.)
No, that thought would never occur to them.
They're too preoccupied gawking at Hollyweird's meat market.
She's still pretty. She has obviously gained some weight, so her face has filled out considerably, but that's her, and she's still pretty.
And I've always thought the Afghans were basically attractive people. They and the Iranians are better looking than the Pakistanis and Arabs, IMHO.
You are a very shallow person...
I bet if you would take that lady clean her up,fix her hair and give her some nice clothes she would be beautiful.
I say that she is a portrait of tenacity.
I doubt any writer could convey what those photos do.
Regards
BUMP
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.
Agreed. A bunch of morons on this thread. This gal asked her husband's permission to remove her burka (sp?) for the new photo. One can only imagine what the harsh weather, lack of skin care products would do any woman's face - let alone the difficult life and loss of a child. People just need to back off. Sheesh. The ignorance and superficiality is apalling here on FR sometimes....
Cheers, CC :)
There are many women I work with that are "beautiful by the bottle". Do away with their make-up, dye-job and blow dryer, and what remains are plain women (disturbingly so, after first impressions have been formed with the make-up on), without the piercing eyes of this woman, and the strength of character developed by trying times and real deprivation.
P.S. Really like your screen name!
It's 100% certainly her, according to the experts. They've verified it with iris recognition, a unique and very reliable biometric identification method.
MM
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