The "Afghan Mona Lisa" Story

 It wan an ordinary day.  Adding a few photos to my Pinterest board titled "Faces of the World."  I was searching for famous faces on  Pinterest's search engine when up popped this haunting face that I knew from years past.  I read the info under the photo and realized it was on the cover of the June 1985 National Geographic Magazine.  It is perhaps the most famous photo ever to appear on the cover of the magazine.  What makes it so remarkable are the young girl's eyes.  The girls name is Sharbat Gula and the photo was taken in December of 1984 by National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry.  Gula was living in the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan during the time of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.  The village were she had lived with her parents and siblings was attacked by Soviet helicopter gunships in the early 80s, killing her parents and forcing her, her siblings and grandmother to hike over the mountains to the Nasir Bahg camp in neighboring Pakistan.  She was approximately 12 years old when Steve took her photo on Kodachrome slide film.  Her photo made her the icon of the Afganistan struggle to the people of the world.  At the time that Steve took the photo, he did not know her name.  It wasn't until 2002 after the Taliban had been removed from Afganistan that Steve began his search for the name that went with the photo he had taken.  He returned to the refugee camp where he first photographed her and, after a few false leads, discovered whom she was and found someone who knew Gula's brother and was able to send word to her hometown of his interest in meeting with her.  She was located in a remote region of Afghanistan.  By using biometric technology she was positively identified by matching her iris pattern to those in the photograph.  Sharbat had never seen her famous photo before viewing it in January 2002 when she was reunited with McCurry.  At first she was very reluctant to expose her face to the photographer, but with some prodding she finally agreed to another series of photographs.  In April of 2002 she was once again featured in National Geographic with a story of her life as well as being the subject of a television documentary entitled Search for the Afghan Girl.  In recognition of her, National Geographic set up the Afghan Girls Fund which is a charitable organization with the goal of educating Afghan girls and young women.  Later, the fund's name was changed to Afghan Children's Fund to also include boys.  Steve McCurry's photograph of the Afghan Girl has been likened to Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the Mona Lisa and is sometimes popularly referred to as "The Afghan Mona Lisa.  I still get chills every time I look at the photo and think of what this young girl must have gone through as a child.  What a beautiful face for such a young spirit.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy. PS - Below is how Sharbat now appears.