Cover to cover, how this Afghan girl went viral 17 years apart
Sharbat Gulla was given refuge in Italy as a part of the West’s evacuation of Afghans on Thursday after the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August. Here’s all you need to know about the green-eyed “Afghan Girl”.
A pair of bright green eyes with a gaze piercing enough to haunt one with the tragedies of the brutal Afghan war; who can forget the iconic portrait taken by war photographer Steve McCurry in 1985. The then 12-year-old girl, later identified as Sharbat Gulla, garnered worldwide fame as the “Afghan Girl” whom McCurry photographed at a refugee camp in Pakistan. In a recent development of blissful fate, Sharbat Gulla was given refuge in Italy as a part of the West’s evacuation of Afghans on Thursday after the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August. Here’s all you need to know about the green-eyed “Afghan Girl”.
WHO IS SHARBAT GULLA?
A mother of four, Sharbat is a 40-year-old widow whose portrait became famous worldwide in 1985. Sharbat was a 12-year-old refugee girl from Afghanistan who was found by photographer Steve McCurry in a refugee tent in Pakistan after the horrific Afghan war. Devastated and tormented, Sharbat’s daunting gaze, mirroring her sorrow of losing her homeland and the anger of vengeance, became an iconic cover of a coveted magazine in the same year.
However, the world didn’t even know Sharbat’s name by then. After 17 long years and many dead ends, McCurry managed to find Sharbat in a remote Afghan village in 2002. She was in her 30s and already a mother of three. She still had those glaring green eyes that spoke of the horrors of war she had to endure. Married to a baker named Rahmat Gul, Sharbat returned to her village in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s.
LIFE AS A REFUGEE
Sharbat may have touched the hearts of many with her portrait, but her struggles were completely unknown to the world. After the Afghan war, Sharbat was taken to Pakistan when she was just 12. She stayed there till 2014, after which she was accused of having a fake Pakistani identity card. In 2016, she was arrested and deported back to Afghanistan.
Sharbat was flown to Kabul with her children where she was welcomed by President Ashraf Ghani at the presidential palace and handed over a key to her own apartment. According to a report by DailyMail, Ghani spoke highly about Sharbat. “The enormous beauty, the enormous energy that she projected from her face captured hearts and became one of the most famous photographs of the 1980s and up until the 1990s,” he said.
WHAT HAPPENED TO SHARBAT GULLA?
Since the Taliban took over Afghanistan after the exit of the US troops, Sharbat requested the Italian government to help her out. According to an official statement issued by the office of Premier Mario Draghi, the Italian government will now help to get her integrated into life in Italy.
In a statement announcing Sharbat’s arrival in Rome, Draghi’s office said her photograph had come to “symbolize the vicissitudes and conflict of the chapter in history that Afghanistan and its people were going through at the time.”
(With inputs from AP)
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