1984 年12月，史蒂夫 · 麦凯瑞在巴基斯坦难民营中拍下了这张十分著名的照片。照片后来刊登在美国《国家地理》 1985 年 6 月号的封面上，立刻吸引了全世界的眼球。整整 17 年来，人们一直将照片中的女子称为“阿富汗少女”或“绿眼睛姑娘”，而不知道她的真实姓名。对于她，人们一无所知，只是被视为无所依靠的象征。
今年1月，史蒂夫和《国家地理》的一组工作人员重返巴基斯坦，试图寻找这位有着摄人眼神的神秘少女的下落，了解这些年在她身上发生过的故事。寻找工作从当年拍摄的难民营做起，工作组四处向人们展示少女的照片。经过几次错误的线索之后，终于有一个男子说他认识这位少女。三天后，一个女子被带到了史蒂夫及工作人员面前。
“我一看到她，就知道她正是我们要找的‘阿富汗少女’，”史蒂夫说，“她也认出了我，因为她一生中只照过那一次像。然而她却没见过那张照片。当然，她也从不知道这个地球上，有无数人看过她的照片。”
通过一名阿富汗记者的翻译，史蒂夫，以及整个世界，终于开始了解这个行踪成迷 17 年的女子。她的名字叫莎尔伯特 · 古拉，普什图族人。年龄在 28 － 30 岁之间，她自己也并不十分清楚准确年龄。现在，她是一个面包师的妻子和三个孩子的妈妈，与家人一起生活在阿富汗托拉博拉地区。他们生活的村庄既没有学校，也没有医疗设施和生活用水。苏联入侵时，她还只是个孩子，战争夺走了她的父母。在祖母的带领下，古拉与哥哥和三个姐姐一起逃到了阿富汗。
1984 年，史蒂夫为了展现巴基斯坦和阿富汗边界地区的生活，来到了巴基斯坦。“在一个难民营中，我用了 5 分钟来拍摄古拉。大约拍了 10 到 15 张。古拉不懂英语，旁边也没有翻译。她有一张摄人的面孔，当时我就在想，这张照片的效果应该会不错。”史蒂夫回忆起 17 年前的那一幕。
照片冲洗出来后，史蒂夫开始意识到他拍了一张多么不凡的照片。最初，《国家地理》的图片编辑认为“阿富汗少女”的表情过于不安，不想采用，而看中了另一张。但史蒂夫坚持己见。于是两张照片一起交给了编辑。“编辑一看到古拉的眼神，就说‘这就是我们这期的封面了’。”
“这无疑是我们出版过的最值得纪念的图片，”《国家地理》的现任总编威廉 · 艾伦给予该片很高的评价，“我无数次的问，那个绿眼睛姑娘现在到底怎么样了？她经历了怎样的生活？”
“鉴于人们对照片的反响，我当时很快就想到了回去找她。”史蒂夫称，“我们收到了很多人对她的询问。人们想知道她的消息，想知道如何来帮助她。她已经成了一个阿富汗妇女及儿童苦难的象征。”但是大量的工作堆在史蒂夫面前：数不清的任务、拍摄题材、书籍、杂志、文章。直到有一天，突然发现 17 年过去了，而人们依然不知道关于这个神秘少女的任何消息。史蒂夫才决定实施未完的计划。
事隔 17 年，史蒂夫再次为她拍下一组照片。莎尔伯特 · 古拉的经历被做为《国家地理》 4 月号的封面故事。寻找、确认其身份的过程也拍摄成为记录片，在“国家地理频道”做全球性播出。另外，“国家地理学会”正成立一项特别基金，为年轻的阿富汗女性提供发展并实现接受教育的机会。“国家地理学会”与特定的非盈利组织和该地区政府合作，以实现这项计划。
[注]： 1984 年拍摄时，史蒂夫使用的是 FM2 和 105mm 尼康镜头； 2002 年，使用的是 F100 和 85mm 尼康镜头。
【摘自 http://www.nikonusa.com/usa_home/home.jsp 】
A Life Revealed
Her eyes have captivated the world since she appeared on our cover in 1985. Now we can tell her story.
By Cathy Newman
Photograph by Steve McCurry
She remembers the moment. The photographer took her picture. She remembers her anger. The man was a stranger. She had never been photographed before. Until they met again 17 years later, she had not been photographed since.
The photographer remembers the moment too. The light was soft. The refugee camp in Pakistan was a sea of tents. Inside the school tent he noticed her first. Sensing her shyness, he approached her last. She told him he could take her picture. "I didn't think the photograph of the girl would be different from anything else I shot that day," he recalls of that morning in 1984 spent documenting the ordeal of Afghanistan's refugees.
The portrait by Steve McCurry turned out to be one of those images that sears the heart, and in June 1985 it ran on the cover of this magazine. Her eyes are sea green. They are haunted and haunting, and in them you can read the tragedy of a land drained by war. She became known around National Geographic as the "Afghan girl," and for 17 years no one knew her name.
In January a team from National Geographic Television & Film's EXPLORER brought McCurry to Pakistan to search for the girl with green eyes. They showed her picture around Nasir Bagh, the still standing refugee camp near Peshawar where the photograph had been made. A teacher from the school claimed to know her name. A young woman named Alam Bibi was located in a village nearby, but McCurry decided it wasn't her.
No, said a man who got wind of the search. He knew the girl in the picture. They had lived at the camp together as children. She had returned to Afghanistan years ago, he said, and now lived in the mountains near Tora Bora. He would go get her.
It took three days for her to arrive. Her village is a six-hour drive and three-hour hike across a border that swallows lives. When McCurry saw her walk into the room, he thought to himself: This is her.
Names have power, so let us speak of hers. Her name is Sharbat Gula, and she is Pashtun, that most warlike of Afghan tribes. It is said of the Pashtun that they are only at peace when they are at war, and her eyes—then and now—burn with ferocity. She is 28, perhaps 29, or even 30. No one, not even she, knows for sure. Stories shift like sand in a place where no records exist.
Time and hardship have erased her youth. Her skin looks like leather. The geometry of her jaw has softened. The eyes still glare; that has not softened. "She's had a hard life," said McCurry. "So many here share her story." Consider the numbers. Twenty-three years of war, 1.5 million killed, 3.5 million refugees: This is the story of Afghanistan in the past quarter century.
Now, consider this photograph of a young girl with sea green eyes. Her eyes challenge ours. Most of all, they disturb. We cannot turn away.
"There is not one family that has not eaten the bitterness of war," a young Afghan merchant said in the 1985 National Geographic story that appeared with Sharbat's photograph on the cover. She was a child when her country was caught in the jaws of the Soviet invasion. A carpet of destruction smothered countless villages like hers. She was perhaps six when Soviet bombing killed her parents. By day the sky bled terror. At night the dead were buried. And always, the sound of planes, stabbing her with dread.
"We left Afghanistan because of the fighting," said her brother, Kashar Khan, filling in the narrative of her life. He is a straight line of a man with a raptor face and piercing eyes. "The Russians were everywhere. They were killing people. We had no choice."
Shepherded by their grandmother, he and his four sisters walked to Pakistan. For a week they moved through mountains covered in snow, begging for blankets to keep warm.
"You never knew when the planes would come," he recalled. "We hid in caves."
The journey that began with the loss of their parents and a trek across mountains by foot ended in a refugee camp tent living with strangers.
"Rural people like Sharbat find it difficult to live in the cramped surroundings of a refugee camp," explained Rahimullah Yusufzai, a respected Pakistani journalist who acted as interpreter for McCurry and the television crew. "There is no privacy. You live at the mercy of other people." More than that, you live at the mercy of the politics of other countries. "The Russian invasion destroyed our lives," her brother said.
It is the ongoing tragedy of Afghanistan. Invasion. Resistance. Invasion. Will it ever end? "Each change of government brings hope," said Yusufzai. "Each time, the Afghan people have found themselves betrayed by their leaders and by outsiders professing to be their friends and saviors."
In the mid-1990s, during a lull in the fighting, Sharbat Gula went home to her village in the foothills of mountains veiled by snow. To live in this earthen-colored village at the end of a thread of path means to scratch out an existence, nothing more. There are terraces planted with corn, wheat, and rice, some walnut trees, a stream that spills down the mountain (except in times of drought), but no school, clinic, roads, or running water.
Here is the bare outline of her day. She rises before sunrise and prays. She fetches water from the stream. She cooks, cleans, does laundry. She cares for her children; they are the center of her life. Robina is 13. Zahida is three. Alia, the baby, is one. A fourth daughter died in infancy. Sharbat has never known a happy day, her brother says, except perhaps the day of her marriage.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text
