National Geographic
National Geographic Cover Features Afghan Girl:
In December 1984, Afghanistan was five years into a bloody civil war between the Soviet Union, which sought to maintain a Marxist government there, and anti-government Islamic rebels called mujahedeen. Millions of refugees were pouring over the borders into Pakistan to escape the fighting.
National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry was in the region for a story on the refugee crisis. While touring a refugee camp on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, he entered a large tent that served as a girls’ school. The first child he saw was a shy girl with fiery eyes, about 12 years old.
McCurry approached the girl, and she agreed to let him take her picture. "I didn't think the photograph of the girl would be different from anything else I shot that day," he later recalled.
What emerged was a searingly beautiful image of a young girl with haunting eyes who came to symbolize the plight and the pain and the strength of her people. National Geographic chose a close-up of the girl as the cover photo for the article, which ran in the June 1985 issue. Her sea green eyes striped with blue and yellow peered with a mixture of bitterness and courage from within a tattered burgundy scarf. The "Afghan girl" touched the souls of millions.
A Mystery for Years
Her name was Sharbat Gula, which means "sweet water flower girl" in Pashtu, the language of her Pashtun tribe. But McCurry, and the world, wouldn't know this or any other details of her tragic life until 17 years later.
Sharbat Gula came to Pakistan in 1983 after her parents were both killed in a Soviet air raid on their Afghan village. She had trudged through the jagged mountains in winter for nearly two weeks with her grandmother, brother, and three sisters. She had lived in several refugee camps before coming to the one where McCurry met her.
McCurry said the photo of her "summed up for me the trauma and plight, and the whole situation of suddenly having to flee your home
In December 1984, Afghanistan was five years into a bloody civil war between the Soviet Union, which sought to maintain a Marxist government there, and anti-government Islamic rebels called mujahedeen. Millions of refugees were pouring over the borders into Pakistan to escape the fighting.
National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry was in the region for a story on the refugee crisis. While touring a refugee camp on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, he entered a large tent that served as a girls’ school. The first child he saw was a shy girl with fiery eyes, about 12 years old.
McCurry approached the girl, and she agreed to let him take her picture. "I didn't think the photograph of the girl would be different from anything else I shot that day," he later recalled.
What emerged was a searingly beautiful image of a young girl with haunting eyes who came to symbolize the plight and the pain and the strength of her people. National Geographic chose a close-up of the girl as the cover photo for the article, which ran in the June 1985 issue. Her sea green eyes striped with blue and yellow peered with a mixture of bitterness and courage from within a tattered burgundy scarf. The "Afghan girl" touched the souls of millions.
A Mystery for Years
Her name was Sharbat Gula, which means "sweet water flower girl" in Pashtu, the language of her Pashtun tribe. But McCurry, and the world, wouldn't know this or any other details of her tragic life until 17 years later.
Sharbat Gula came to Pakistan in 1983 after her parents were both killed in a Soviet air raid on their Afghan village. She had trudged through the jagged mountains in winter for nearly two weeks with her grandmother, brother, and three sisters. She had lived in several refugee camps before coming to the one where McCurry met her.
McCurry said the photo of her "summed up for me the trauma and plight, and the whole situation of suddenly having to flee your home