Interview manuscript of American photography magazine

I watched a documentary about finding this girl on TV last week.

She is an Afghan girl who appeared on the cover of the June issue of National Geographic magazine, 1984.

This is the story of 17 years later when the photographer went to find her. There are more detailed introductions and pictures on the following reference links.

1984 One morning, steve mccurry, a photographer from National Geographic magazine, searched for subjects in dusty Pakistani refugee camps and various tents like the sea in Wang Yang. After some searching, he aimed the camera at an Afghan girl with green eyes.

"I chose her because she is the most shy of those children." Steve recalled afterwards. When this group of photos was taken, the former Soviet army had occupied Afghanistan for five years, fighter planes circled in the sky, and a large number of civilians lost their homes and were forced to hike over the snow-capped mountains to take refuge in neighboring Pakistan. The little girl was one of the orphans of Qian Qian War, and her parents were killed in the bombing when she was about six years old.

After taking the photo of the little girl, reporter Steve himself didn't think about its impact: this photo was selected as the cover photo of June 1985 by National Geographic magazine and distributed around the world with beautifully printed magazines. The little girl in the photo, with tight lips and tough chin lines, is like a knife carving. Her light black skin is covered with a layer of dark brown fireworks, which makes people feel as if they can smell the burning smell of the dead on the battlefield and hear the annoying roar of shells on her face. She wore a crimson headscarf, and her hair was thin and yellow and very dry. Under the thick eyebrows, a pair of green eyes with the same color as the waves of the sea are completely Ivylinna Lee, staring at the whole world quietly in extreme fear, as if avoiding something, and as if asking questions reluctantly, wanting an answer. These unusually angry eyes, at first glance, are unusually calm, and then they feel that there is a strange flame burning inside. People can't help asking, before the world was so desperate and angry, how could a childlike heart be broken into thousands of pieces?

What shocked the reporter himself was that on such a broken edge, this face was still a beautiful little girl's face, delicate and soft enough to be pressed into a thin line. This kind of beauty is the beauty of daisies run over by wheels, and it is the tension between life and death, strength and weakness.

This image hit thousands of readers in Qian Qian like radio waves: white, yellow and black ... Steve received thousands of letters describing the feeling brought by this photo. After seeing this photo, many people resolutely gave up their present lives and went to Qian Shan to volunteer in Pakistani refugee camps, and their lives changed …

"There is an anger in the eyes staring at the world. That kind of anger is an interference with my quiet life. I just can't put this photo down. " A reader wrote in the letter. Meanwhile, Steve is thinking about this girl. What's her name? How is she now? Because of the influence of this photo, Steve felt that he and the little girl had an unusual concern, and she seemed to gradually become an important part of his life. Those quiet eyes have been engraved in his heart, like rock paintings left in stone walls.

Seventeen years later, Steve still often comes to Afghanistan to photograph this tragic country. He has more or less assimilated with the local people, whether in appearance, clothes or feelings. As time went on, he was being changed, but his heart never let go of the little girl. After witnessing the sufferings of this country again and again, thousands of concerns about girls slowly condense into a question: Are you still alive? After 23 years of war,1500,000 people died and 3.5 million people were homeless. Are you still alive? !

Finally, in the spring of 2002, Steve embarked on a journey to find this unknown little girl. After countless futile attempts, Steve asked the photo again and again in the refugee camp to get the exact whereabouts of the little girl. Yes, she is still alive, married, with three children, and lives in the mountains of Afghanistan. So Steve immediately sent a letter inviting the girl to meet her in Pakistan. Three days later, when an Afghan woman with a veil and only her eyes came into his house, Steve immediately recognized her. It is those eyes recorded by his lens, looking at the edge of the veil with fear and doubt, burning with vicissitudes of life without tears and grief. It is these sharp eyes that cut the happy life of many readers. Her name is chabat Gula.

Their conversation was short and seemed calm. The woman still remembered the reporter because he was the only person in the world who took pictures of him. For her, who didn't finish primary school, watch TV and have no contact with magazines because of the war, the feeling of facing the camera is unforgettable. Like Steve, she deeply remembers the day when the photo was taken. Tents in refugee camps are like the sea. She was the last girl to be photographed. It was sunny that day, but she was afraid and sad inside.

17 years later, she can finally look at her childhood photos with National Geographic magazine, but she can't understand the fact that Steve's emotional description of his image has touched the world. She is just very sorry for wearing a headscarf with a hole in the photo, and she is deeply embarrassed about it.

"I burned it when I was cooking." She explained.

When asked about her recent situation, her brother answered for her. Like most Afghans, she was plagued by poverty and troubled times and struggled. After her parents died, she and her brother and sister walked across the snow-capped mountains to a refugee camp in Pakistan, hungry and cold all the way, begging for thin blankets everywhere to keep warm; She got married at the age of sixteen, and her husband worked as a helper in a bakery, with a meager income. She had four children, one of whom died early. She also suffered from asthma for many years.

"Over the years, she never smiled except on her wedding day."

The reporter asked her if there was anything she needed his help.

The woman behind the veil slowly replied, "I hope the American government can help the Afghans. Our country was destroyed by the war. I hope you can help rebuild. "

Steve was shocked that this uneducated woman's first thought was not of herself, but of this country. So he asked her what her personal expectations were.

The woman behind the veil hesitated for a moment and said slowly, "Read. I didn't get an education because of the war. I hope my three daughters can study. The oldest child is thirteen, maybe it's too late. I hope the following two children can study. "

Steve promised that he would help her realize this dream. Before the conversation ended, Steve begged her husband to allow her to lift the veil and let him take another photo of her. Because according to Islamic custom, a woman can't show it to any man except her husband after marriage, nor can she smile at them.

After the husband agrees, the woman lifts the veil. Steve's smiling face reappeared in the camera, and Daisy had become a stone statue with heavy shackles. Seventeen years have passed, and the skin of the once soft child has become as hard as leather with a sheath, which has exhausted all the wind and frost she has suffered over the years. The dark brown flocculent marks left after delivery are branded on her cheeks, indicating that she has assumed the traditional fate of being a wife and mother. Thick eyebrows are thicker, wrinkled and preoccupied. The sharp chin has become square, but the original stubborn outline is a little more calm and soft, as if I don't want to fight anything anymore. However, when she looked at the camera with seemingly calm eyes, Steve felt a familiar lightning. The anger and sharp light in green eyes, like when she was a child, still convey a feeling of nakedness and pain.

This is a face representing war.

This camera faithfully recorded the story of an Afghan woman for seventeen years. In the unrecorded world, life "flies and disappears like dust on the land", and after being recorded, this orphan who doesn't even know his real age has a strange weight in front of readers all over the world. Seventeen years ago, everyone saw her. Seventeen years later, people still pay attention to her, knowing that she is still alive and getting old, and hope that her children will have a future.

For Steve, the original intention of filming was to complete the task and find valuable news, but in the end, his real life was touched by the people and things behind the camera. Everything is beyond the meaning of a news story, because he created an eye story, his own eyes, the eyes of a camera, the eyes of a girl and the eyes of a reader. Everything is watching and waiting weakly but continuously. Waiting for this kind of waiting to converge into a force, what can really change, through a seventeen years or a hundred lonely seventeen years.

Steve said, I hope.