Misc

Mystery Afghan Cover Girl Found

She was one of the world's most famous faces, yet no one knew who she was. Her image appeared on the front of magazines and books, posters, and even rugs, but she didn't know it. Now, after searching for 17 years, National Geographic has once again found the Afghan girl with the haunting green eyes.

The mysterious "Afghan girl" whose direct gaze has intrigued the West for so long is Sharbat Gula. She lives in a remote region of Afghanistan with her husband and three daughters.

Gula was located nearly two decades after her picture appeared on the cover of National Geographic magazine in 1985. She had no idea her face had become an icon, said Steve McCurry, the photographer who made the famous portrait for the magazine, and who tried to find her again during many subsequent trips he made to Pakistan and Afghanistan. In January 2002, a National Geographic team returned to the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan, where Gula was originally photographed, to search for her. She was identified through a series of contacts that led to her brother and husband, who agreed to ask her if she was willing to be interviewed.

Gula has been photographed on only two occasions: in 1984 and at the reunion with McCurry this year. She had never seen her famous portrait before it was shown to her in January.

National Geographic set out to make one last concerted effort to find the Afghan girl before the refugee camp in Pakistan where she had last been seen was demolished From the camp, the trail wound through several villages and into at least one dead end, until someone recognized the girl on the cover of National Geographic and said he knew her brother.

"The second I saw the color of her brother's eyes, I knew we had the right family," said Boyd Matson host of the National Geographic television show, Explorer who was with the group that met Gula. Because Gula lives a traditional Muslim life behind the veil, Gula was not allowed to meet men outside her family. But the Geographic team was given permission to send a female associate producer to meet Sharbat Gula and photograph her face.

When Gula agreed to have her picture taken for the second time in her life, she came out from the secrecy of her veil to tell her story. She married and had four daughters, one of whom died in infancy. She lives in obscurity, according to the customs and traditions of her culture and religion.

A member of the Pashtun ethnic group in Afghanistan, Gula said she fared relatively well under Taliban rule, which, she feels, provided a measure of stability after the chaos and terror of the Soviet war. According to Matson and McCurry, Gula has returned to anonymity; the latest publicity about her name and face is unlikely to draw attention to her in Afghanistan. "She will not give another media interview and she wishes not to be contacted," Matson said. Her family has relocated to a different village in a remote part of Afghanistan, where she will continue to live her life in purdah, he added.