Yasmin Nair
States of the Union is an ongoing series featuring brief pieces by writers we admire from around the world. Some of the writers are in exile, some communicate from within a country ruled by a regime they defy. Read editor-in-chief Dale Peck’s introduction to the series here. For the full series, click here.
In 2002, the photographer Steve McCurry and National Geographic launched a search for the subject of his most famous photograph, “Afghan Girl,” taken in 1985. The United States had occupied Afghanistan in 2001, in a hunt for Osama bin Laden. Hunting for the girl, now undoubtedly a woman—if she remained alive—brought renewed attention to the magazine and the photographer. The hunt was for a woman who had been a refugee all her life and who never asked to be found, who did not even know she existed as a photograph made iconically world-famous. To whom was the girl and woman “lost,” exactly? What follows is a troubling of the narrative of the hunt, a series of befores and afters not intended to make chronological sense or to provide known details but to uncover the politics of the hunt itself.
Sharbat Gula is not lost.
It is 1984 and a ten-year old girl named Sharbat, last name unknown, is making her way from Afghanistan to Pakistan, across treacherous terrain and in the dead of winter. She is with her father and four siblings. Her mother died some years ago, of appendicitis. Above them, they can hear Soviet fighter jets bombing the country they are fleeing. They make their way to Peshawar and a rough-and-tumble refugee camp, Nasir Bagh, that is really just a tent city. Sharbat is placed in a school for girls and receives an education under the tarpaulin.
Sharbat Gula is not lost.
It is 1984 and a twelve-year-old orphan has found her way to a Peshawar refugee camp with her siblings. The children had to bury their parents’ bodies in the snow before they moved on. Once at Nasir Bag camp, Sharbat is placed in a girls’ school in a large tent to receive an education.
Sharbat Gula is not lost.
It is 1984. A white foreigner, an American, enters the tent, looking around curiously. He sees Sharbat and notices her eyes: bright green irises glinting in the light. He also notices that she is beautiful, that her eyes are not her only striking feature. He asks if she will pose for a picture. The girl refuses. She has never been photographed, but the teacher makes her agree. The photographer takes initial shots of the girl and she holds her tattered red scarf up to her face, hiding its lower half. Together the two adults make her pose without hiding her face; we never learn how or what was said to make a reluctant child, without parents or family nearby, agree to such a thing. The photographer finds a blank wall, a pale greenish color, and makes her stand in front of it. He never asks her name or finds out anything about her, never thinks of asking her parents for permission. His only concern is with taking a photograph he knows he can sell for a lot of money to AP or UPI or National Geographic. When he’s done, she leaves the room abruptly.
Sharbat Gula is not lost.
It is June 1985. The photographer, Steve McCurry, has had his photograph, titled “Afghan Girl,” published on the cover of National Geographic, with the words “Haunted eyes tell of an Afghan refugee’s fears.” For years afterward, he will speak of it as a “moment” in time, and describe the taking of the photo as if it were a simple, random shot, almost an accident. But in fact he took multiple photographs and told his model where and how to sit. In the end, it is a beautifully composed shot: her dark hair frames her face with its piercing eyes, the hair is partially covered by a red shawl wrapped all around her upper half, with holes large enough that you can see her green dress under it. Behind her is a pale green wall in soft focus. The eyes are the center of the shot. She is not smiling. Her face is defiant and angry.
In 1985, the word “viral” only refers to viruses, not to the speed with which a single photograph might ricochet around the world and become one of the most recognizable images of the twentieth century and beyond. But by our standards today, the photo defines “viral.” Years later, on yet another trip to Afghanistan, McCurry will encounter the image everywhere: a rough simulacrum pasted up on a wall, on large posters around the city, and various versions (including one done by a sketch artist in graphite) hanging up in touristy curio shops. Its subject has become both the symbol and the destination. Everywhere, people wax rhapsodically about the photograph, which now supposedly contains worlds of meaning. They insist that her face speaks to the plight of all refugees everywhere.
“What we can surmise with some certainty is that the grand search for her was a publicity stunt, something that seemed particularly appropriate for the war in Afghanistan.”
Sharbat Gula is not lost.
It is 2001, and men have flown planes into the Twin Towers of New York City. Three thousand people have died, revenge is called for, and there are now around 2,500 American troops in Afghanistan. They are determined to find Osama bin Laden who may be hiding anywhere in the rough and ancient terrain of a country where, as Mike Malloy once put it, empires go to die. National Geographic spreads a story, with McCurry, that so many people asked about “Afghan Girl” that the magazine felt compelled to search for her. By now McCurry has already profited massively from the image, as has the magazine. On the Oprah show in 2001, the host says to him, “I heard that you’ve tried several times to locate this girl.” But there is never any verification of these attempts, except the words of a man who never bothered to ask the name of the girl he coerced into sitting for a portrait.
What we can surmise with some certainty is that the grand search for her was a publicity stunt, something that seemed particularly appropriate for the war in Afghanistan.
Sharbat Gula is not lost.
It is 2001. In a radio address to the nation on November 17, 2001, First Lady Laura Bush justifies the invasion of Afghanistan, painting it as a victory for women’s rights: “Because of our recent military gains, in much of Afghanistan women are no longer imprisoned in their homes. They can listen to music and teach their daughters without fear of punishment. Yet, the terrorists who helped rule that country now plot and plan in many countries, and they must be stopped. The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.”
Across the United States, American women, mostly white, dress up in burqas and walk solemnly across campuses and city squares, in what they imagine as a gesture of solidarity with Afghani women. In such ways, a garment became a potent symbol. But a symbol of what? Nine days after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney wears a burqa on the House floor to justify the invasion.
Sharbat Gula is not lost.
It is 2002 and National Geographic isn’t about to travel to a faraway country and tramp through inhospitable terrain looking for a woman they declare lost. They team up with the FBI and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, deploying state of the art iris recognition technology that will help them identify and determine whether someone is or is not the woman for whom they have no details, not a name or even a sense of whether or not she’s still alive. There is no body to be seen or felt or touched, but the technology that will bring her into being exists, waiting to materialize her. If she still exists, since she could be dead for all they know.
The plan is to take photographs of prospective Afghan Girls (now women), of their eyes, and send the images back to America where a team of two will carefully analyze the iris images. (War is always an industry, and it spawns new technologies that are eventually farmed out to civilians. The wristwatch, once dismissed as too feminine for men, was made popular when the U.S. army issued it to soldiers during World War I; it was seen as a safer alternative to a pocket watch for trench-bound soldiers.) At the same time, 9/11 has allowed the American state to ramp up surveillance on the general public and curtail civil liberties. Protests are bound up in red tape to such an extent that spontaneous outcries against the war become impossible: even the smallest marches require permits days and sometimes weeks ahead of time, and movement during them is severely limited. Eventually, thousands of Afghans and Pakistanis and American citizens misidentified as rebels and allies of bin Laden will be swept up. Many will end up in the black hole of Guantanamo. Many more will be lost to time and memory by torture, suicide, and desperation.
Sharbat Gula is not lost.
As McCurry and the Geographic team embark on a mission that only they need to fulfill, “Afghan Girl” becomes in effect a suspect in need of capturing. In a documentary on the process, narrated by Sigourney Weaver, the team is shown engaged in a hunt for “Afghan Woman” that closely parallels the hunt for terrorists. In this, they’re enabled by native informants like Rahimullah Yousufzai whose credentials as a famed Pakistani political journalist who once interviewed bin Laden are erased in favor of a depiction of him as a simple Muslim man trying to do good. In this, he appears complicit, perhaps eager to be known as the man who “found” the most famous Afghani in the world, presenting himself as a good-hearted interlocutor. Every narrative around Gula has consistently erased any evidence that her story is embedded in politics.
Sharbat Gula is not lost.
The documentary shows bits of at least two unsuccessful attempts, both among families that are clearly desperate. In one, the parents can’t afford the equivalent of twenty-five cents to send their children to school. Cameras enter homes that are barely more than mud walls and tin roofs, with no running water in sight, lingering on the hands of the women washing dishes carefully, their poverty on full display. Clothes have been curated for the foreign visitors and their cameras, their dignity stripped away as they’re reduced to archetypes, made to stand and pose stiffly for the cameras of a magazine with a century-long history of visual violence. The women who claim to be Sharbat Gula are examined like dogs at the Westminster show, with intruders making remarks about their faces and eyes. It’s entirely possible that the families, barely making it, might well have pretended that Sharbat was one of them in the hope of some money.
Sharbat Gula is not lost.
Finally, a ray of hope (for McCurry anyway). A brother has been located. He tells the documentarians that his sister has returned to Afghanistan and now lives in Tora Bora with her husband and children. No matter: somehow it’s arranged that all of them—husband, wife, and three children—should be brought back to Peshawar. There’s no sign of consent on her part: the account comes from her brother whose green eyes, a journalist notes approvingly, resemble those in McCurry’s famous photograph. Finally she is in the house and a woman photographer enters, takes a photograph. Then a male journalist (McCurry has to leave Pakistan for a while) is allowed in, the images are sent back, and it’s a match.
Sharbat Gula is not lost.
It is 2002 and McCurry (now back) waits in a living room in Pakistan to meet Sharbat Gula. She emerges, a body and face ravaged by time and the sun. The eyes are still green if dimmed somewhat. The team again points out that her brother has the exact same eyes. Once again, McCurry works with someone other than Gula to take her photograph, gaining her husband’s permission to shoot a photograph, even though she’s reluctant, posing her with the face veil of her burqa off and then on again. The latter image shows her fully hidden behind the cloth, holding a copy of the 1985 National Geographic in her hands. The message is clear: this beautiful girl is once again being oppressed by the Taliban.
Sharbat Gula is not lost.
It is 1985, and Sharbat is married off at the age of thirteen to a baker. But because there are no bakeries in their area, he works in Peshawar and sends money home. Like many refugees and people with few resources, they move back and forth between the two countries.
Sharbat Gula is not lost.
Back in Pakistan, the National Geographic team hears the story of Sharbat Gula and her husband. Their eldest daughter died, and he speaks of not having been with his wife at the time. The parents’ grief is barely noted and recorded. In the documentary, McCurry is seen posing them all for another photograph.
“They tease her about her famed eyes, about the stories that they are magic and bring good luck to anyone who sees them.”
Sharbat Gula is not lost.
Back in the United States, the iris recognition team confirms that Sharbat Gula, who never saw any need to declare her identity, is in fact Sharbat Gula. The discovery is made and presented as if at a court trial, as if Sharbat Gula had raised a claim about her identity for some kind of profit and her case and the evidence needed to be examined closely.
At the end of the documentary, she is heard saying that she wished she had continued her education and that she wants her children to be educated. And she asks the United States to continue with its development efforts in Afghanistan. Her words are stilted, rehearsed.
Sharbat Gula is not lost.
Sharbat Gula was lost only to National Geographic.
In 2017, she is arrested by the Pakistani government for being in possession of false documents (not uncommon among refugees) and deported to Afghanistan, but not before she is imprisoned for a fortnight. By then, she had been living mostly in Pakistan for thirty-five years and as she says in an interview, she was happy there and it’s the only country she and her children have known. By then, her husband is dead of hepatitis, a curable disease unless you’re poor.
Once back in Afghanistan, the government swoops down on her as a popular symbol and mascot of sorts. She appears, her face weary with the weight and sadness of life itself, by the side of President Ghani, who cheerfully tells the press that she has been given a house and healthcare for her children and a $700 stipend. She can barely smile and the children wander around with fixed stares at and away from the cameras. Ghani’s wife is there too and at the end of the conference, she sits down in a chair and motions to the smallest child to come and sit in her lap. The child, not comprehending the point of a photo op, does so reluctantly.
Sharbat Gula is not lost.
In a few interviews, sparks of her story emerge, contradicting others. She insists she was twelve when the picture was taken, and that her father was in fact alive at the time. It seems clear from her demeanor which is not shy but reluctant and stoic that she is being compelled to make media appearances in exchange for the material goods given to her. On one occasion, she appears on a television show hosted by two young, hip, and suited millennials, their childish and slick banter contrasting with her quiet presence in a striking blue robe and shawl. She says that Pakistan had been her only home for thirty-five years. There is barely a second of silence and then the men swoop past any hint of anguish: surely it’s so much better to be in the homeland? She nods wearily.
They tease her about her famed eyes, about the stories that they are magic and bring good luck to anyone who sees them. “Can you help my friend here?” one asks. The answer, given with a weary smile, “If that were the case, why would my own life have been so miserable?”
Sharbat Gula is not lost.
September 2021, and Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan leaves a country in tatters. Ghani and his wife are placed in a plane headed to the UAE, supposedly with $150 million in cash. He has since received safe passage on “humanitarian grounds,” leaving behind his belongings and an extensive collection of nearly 7,000 books.
Sharbat Gula is once again a refugee, a status she has lived with all her life, passing it down to her children the way one passes down hair and eye color and other genetic traits. She gained respite from that status for a very few years, but at the cost of losing the only home she had known for most of her life, a home that surely included friendships and communities, even in the fractured life of a refugee and in camps.
In 2021, she somehow mobilizes her resources and gets the Italian government to accept her and her children as refugees (McCurry has taken credit for this, but the Instagram post in which he claimed to have helped her get out has been taken down). She has now been hurled headlong into a culture that is far more alien and literally foreign to her, swept up into the waves of undifferentiated brown masses of unwelcome foreigners. The Italian government has promised to help her to integrate.
Sharbat Gula is not lost.
Yasmin Nair
Yasmin Nair is a writer, academic, and activist based in Chicago, a co-founder of the radical queer editorial collective Against Equality, editor-at-large at Current Affairs, a member of the editorial board of the The Anarchist Review of Books, and a member of Gender JUST Chicago. Her work can be found at www.yasminnair.com. Her Manifesto appeared in the Winter 2017 issue of Evergreen.
Image by Hippolyte Baraduc (1850-1902). Reproduced from L'âme humaine: ses mouvements, ses lumières et l'iconographie de l'invisible fluidique (The human soul: its movements, its lights, and the iconography of the fluidic invisible), Paris: Librairie internationale de la pensée nouvelle, 1913.