It was 1984. Afghanistan was in political turmoil. Five years had passed since the Soviet invasion. Afghan people took refuge in Pakistan, relying on makeshift communities along the border.
Here, there were rows and rows of tents stretching into oblivion. This city of tents, just outside Peshawar, belonged to the Pashtun people. In this photo, the green fabric of the tent serves a more aesthetic purpose. Its deep emerald hues match the color of Sharbat Gula’s eyes, heightening the strength of her gaze.
But the intensity of the stare is misleading. Her eyes reflect experience that should be well beyond her years; in this photo, Sharbat Gula is only ten years old.
For Gula, this day was like any other. She was in the school tent, learning with the other girls of her community. But that changed when an American photographer entered her tent. He was documenting the plight of Afghan refugees in the camps. Gula’s teacher allowed him inside the tent and permitted him to photograph the girls.
Steve McCurry knew he needed to create a portrait of Sharbat Gula the moment he entered the tent. “She had an intense, haunted look, a really penetrating gaze… She was very shy, and I thought if I photographed other children first she would be more likely to agree.” So McCurry went to work. He photographed two girls before approaching Gula.
At first, Gula was hesitant. She was young and her culture was strict. Women were not to be alone in a room with a man who was not a family member or husband, let alone photographed by anyone. She had never even seen a camera before. Suddenly, this foreigner stood before her with a strange, ominous object.
Gula’s teacher gave permission for her portrait to be taken. She instructed the child to pose. The first shot captured her childlike playfulness, and Gula covered her mouth with her headscarf. But McCurry knew he needed to see her entire face, and Gula’s teacher asked her to remove the scarf.
Sharbat Gula dropped her scarf and stared into the camera. Click. As soon as it’d happened, Gula was gone. Maybe she was scared or maybe she was bored. She ran off to join her friends. McCurry had gotten only five shots of her. No more photos would be taken of the Afghan Girl. For now.
McCurry went on with his travels, photographing communities across the Middle East and Asia. He sent his film back to the States to be developed, still unsure of what was to come of the portraits he’d captured of the young girl. He did not even know her name.
Sharbat Gula went on with her day. She continued to do what a ten year old girl does. Life was unchanged. She grew up, and probably never thought of that strange American man again.
Little did Sharbat Gula know that in the United States, her portraits had just been developed. It was later in the year and, back in New York, Steve McCurry had just seen his photos of Sharbat Gula for the first time. He knew he had something special, but he could not predict what would follow. No one could.
At first, the editors of National Geographic planned to use the photo of the young girl covering her face. The playful one. But Bill Garret, who was the head editor at the time, decided to change the photo to the one pictured above. He said, “I remember clearly, Steve's now famous Afghan girl picture was in the 'seconds.' As soon as I saw it, I just knew it was an amazing image.” And so the photo of Sharbat Gula, still unknown by name, adorned the front cover of National Geographic in the now famous June 1985 issue.
Sharbat Gula’s face arrived on doorsteps all across the United States and beyond. The western world was taken with the face of the Afghan Girl. Garret later said, “Readers loved it. The response was immediate. Steve took this young girl’s picture one morning in a refugee camp in Pakistan, and he created an image that has captivated millions of people around the world. Those haunting green eyes just stared out from the magazine cover, capturing the girl’s plight and our gaze.” And so Sharbat Gula became an icon, known only by her title as Afghan Girl.
Readers reached out to the magazine. They wanted to know more about the girl, they wanted to donate money and some, McCurry says, even wanted to marry her. But they had no contact with Sharbat Gula or the village. There was no way to reach anyone who might know this girl. Eventually, attention faded from the cover and the world moved on.
* * *
It was 2001. The United States was in upheaval. Seventeen years had passed since the photo of Sharbat Gula was captured. 9/11 had just horrified the country. American interest in Afghanistan again peaked. National Geographic knew what must be done. They would find the Afghan Girl.
Steve McCurry and his team packed up their gear and boarded a fifteen hour flight to Pakistan. They didn’t have a name -- they didn’t even know which tribe she belonged to. There was nothing to guide their search but the photo of this unknown girl, now a woman in her 30s. No one on the team thought they would actually locate the Afghan Girl. McCurry even said, “We thought it would practically take a miracle to find her.” With nothing but a photo and their equipment, they relied on asking around.
Do you recognize this girl?
In 2001, there were over one million people living in Peshawar. When McCurry and his team arrived at the old tent camp where he’d met Sharbat Gula, they found it set to be demolished. They’d arrived just in time to speak with any people who still remained.
National Geographic had a team doctor the photo of Sharbat Gula to reflect what she might look like after aging. The new print was distributed to elders across the refugee camps. They even tracked down the teacher from the day McCurry took the photo. But no one had answers. In the camps, they asked hundreds of people if they recognized the girl in the photograph.
That’s me. I’m the Afghan Girl.
Dozens of young Afghan women claimed to be the girl in the photo. Some even claimed to remember McCurry and the moment of the photograph. There were small telling details that disputed their stories: iris color, freckles, eye flexes. None of the women were truly the Afghan Girl. But everyone knew that money would come with that reputation.
After a few weeks of searching, the team was ready to give up. No one could give them the information they needed to locate this girl. They figured she must be missing or dead. It wasn’t uncommon at the time.
But just when they thought it would never happen, a man claimed he knew the brother of the girl in the photograph. They weren’t very hopeful. This had to be another false lead. But they followed it anyway.
When they met Khashar Khan, they knew he was telling the truth. He was Afghan Girl’s brother. His intense green eyes washed away any doubt in their minds.
The team arranged a meeting with the woman they believed could be the girl from the iconic photograph. The woman was brought to the village elder’s house and the team was told that first, only a woman could come in and meet her. Carrie Regan was the only woman on McCurry’s crew: “And so I walked into this room and I saw her sitting in the back. She had her head covered with a black scarf. I had the photograph in my hand… I was looking at it and looking at her face, looking at the moles, and I looked at the flex in her eyes and they all lined up. For the first time I thought, oh my God, I think we’ve actually found her. I think this could be the Afghan Girl.”
After negotiating with the family, McCurry was able to meet Gula. For McCurry, there was one distinct feature that confirmed this was the woman they were looking for: the scar on the bridge of her nose, visible even in that photo seventeen years ago. Finally, the anonymous Afghan Girl had a name to be told to the world. Sharbat Gula.
By then Sharbat Gula was nearly thirty years old, but McCurry was even surprised at how much she had aged. Since the photograph, Gula had been married and given birth to children. She was still living as a refugee in Pakistan. It was the first time she had ever seen the photo of her that had become famous across the world.
Gula was now past the age of puberty, so it was considered shameful for her to be seen, let alone photographed, by a man other than her husband. But Gula’s husband was aware of the potential that a photoshoot might have for bringing awareness to the conditions in Afghanistan. He decided to allow Gula to pose for a recreation of the photograph taken seventeen years earlier. She removed her burqa to reveal her face. McCurry captured Sharbat Gula in the same exact pose as before, this time holding the original for comparison. Her face changed, but the same bold gaze filled the lens. Once again, the Afghan Girl captivated the minds of Americans with a cover on National Geographic.
In interviews, Gula reveals her true feelings about the photograph. She admits she felt embarrassed and ashamed at first, as did her husband, due to it being a sort of violation of their culture. But, Gula shares with interviewers, she now has happier feelings about the photograph. The image was responsible for major awareness about the conditions of Afghan refugees and raised money for many young Afghan girls.
Steve McCurry knew this time, he would not allow himself to lose contact with Sharbat Gula and her family. His fame and financial gain was partially due to Gula and her appearance in his photograph. Now that he’d found her, McCurry started offering financial support to the Gula family. On a phone call with McCurry, he told me he sent his sister to Pakistan afterward to meet the Gulas. While there, she used McCurry’s cash to purchase the Gulas a house in Sharbat Gula’s name. For the next decade and a half, McCurry sent a monthly check to support the family.
* * *
It was 2016. Pakistani officials were cracking down on illegal immigrants in the country. It had been fifteen years since Gula had reunited with McCurry. The country forced hundreds of thousands of refugees to return to Afghanistan. Sharbat Gula was now in her forties and had lost her husband and two of her six children to disease. Gula’s family had fled Afghanistan when she was barely five years old. Pakistan was the only home she had ever known.
In a desperate attempt to protect her family, Sharbat Gula obtained false identity documents for her and her children. It was the only thing that might protect them from arbitrary roundups and arrests. But, the plan did not work. In November of 2019, Gula was arrested for carrying false identification.
Creating shock worldwide, Sharbat Gula was sentenced to two weeks in detention and ordered to be deported to Afghanistan, along with her family. Later, she told a reporter, “We had a good time there, had good neighbors, lived among our own Pashtun brothers. But I didn't expect that the Pakistani government would treat me like this at the end.” And so Pakistan deported the woman who served as the most iconic image of refuge in their country.
But, the fame of Gula’s photograph was not lost to the Afghan government. President Ashraf Ghani arranged for her release from detention. He provided her family a temporary apartment, and then gifted her a family home in Kabul.
In a country her family might have called home, Gula was alone. This was unfamiliar land, a place she nor her children had ever seen before. Her family fled because they feared for their lives. Now, she was supposed to make it her home.