1984 年12月，史蒂夫 · 麥凱瑞在巴基斯坦難民營中拍下了這張十分著名的照片。照片後來刊登在美國《國家地理》 1985 年 6 月號的封麵上，立刻吸引了全世界的眼球。整整 17 年來，人們一直將照片中的女子稱為“阿富汗少女”或“綠眼睛姑娘”，而不知道她的真實姓名。對於她，人們一無所知，隻是被視為無所依靠的象征。
今年1月，史蒂夫和《國家地理》的一組工作人員重返巴基斯坦，試圖尋找這位有著攝人眼神的神秘少女的下落，了解這些年在她身上發生過的故事。尋找工作從當年拍攝的難民營做起，工作組四處向人們展示少女的照片。經過幾次錯誤的線索之後，終於有一個男子說他認識這位少女。三天後，一個女子被帶到了史蒂夫及工作人員麵前。
“我一看到她，就知道她正是我們要找的‘阿富汗少女’，”史蒂夫說，“她也認出了我，因為她一生中隻照過那一次像。然而她卻沒見過那張照片。當然，她也從不知道這個地球上，有無數人看過她的照片。”
通過一名阿富汗記者的翻譯，史蒂夫，以及整個世界，終於開始了解這個行蹤成迷 17 年的女子。她的名字叫莎爾伯特 · 古拉，普什圖族人。年齡在 28 － 30 歲之間，她自己也並不十分清楚準確年齡。現在，她是一個麵包師的妻子和三個孩子的媽媽，與家人一起生活在阿富汗托拉博拉地區。他們生活的村莊既沒有學校，也沒有醫療設施和生活用水。蘇聯入侵時，她還隻是個孩子，戰爭奪走了她的父母。在祖母的帶領下，古拉與哥哥和三個姐姐一起逃到了阿富汗。
1984 年，史蒂夫為了展現巴基斯坦和阿富汗邊界地區的生活，來到了巴基斯坦。“在一個難民營中，我用了 5 分鍾來拍攝古拉。大約拍了 10 到 15 張。古拉不懂英語，旁邊也沒有翻譯。她有一張攝人的麵孔，當時我就在想，這張照片的效果應該會不錯。”史蒂夫回憶起 17 年前的那一幕。
照片衝洗出來後，史蒂夫開始意識到他拍了一張多麽不凡的照片。最初，《國家地理》的圖片編輯認為“阿富汗少女”的表情過於不安，不想采用，而看中了另一張。但史蒂夫堅持己見。於是兩張照片一起交給了編輯。“編輯一看到古拉的眼神，就說‘這就是我們這期的封麵了’。”
“這無疑是我們出版過的最值得紀念的圖片，”《國家地理》的現任總編威廉 · 艾倫給予該片很高的評價，“我無數次的問，那個綠眼睛姑娘現在到底怎麽樣了？她經曆了怎樣的生活？”
“鑒於人們對照片的反響，我當時很快就想到了回去找她。”史蒂夫稱，“我們收到了很多人對她的詢問。人們想知道她的消息，想知道如何來幫助她。她已經成了一個阿富汗婦女及兒童苦難的象征。”但是大量的工作堆在史蒂夫麵前：數不清的任務、拍攝題材、書籍、雜誌、文章。直到有一天，突然發現 17 年過去了，而人們依然不知道關於這個神秘少女的任何消息。史蒂夫才決定實施未完的計劃。
事隔 17 年，史蒂夫再次為她拍下一組照片。莎爾伯特 · 古拉的經曆被做為《國家地理》 4 月號的封麵故事。尋找、確認其身份的過程也拍攝成為記錄片，在“國家地理頻道”做全球性播出。另外，“國家地理學會”正成立一項特別基金，為年輕的阿富汗女性提供發展並實現接受教育的機會。“國家地理學會”與特定的非盈利組織和該地區政府合作，以實現這項計劃。
[注]： 1984 年拍攝時，史蒂夫使用的是 FM2 和 105mm 尼康鏡頭； 2002 年，使用的是 F100 和 85mm 尼康鏡頭。
【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.
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
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