Girl in the picture

It has been called the most recognised picture of this century. It is a portrait of a 12-year-old girl with captivating sea-green eyes and a red shawl flung around her head in a yearbook-style photograph.

She looks at the camera in a courageous stare that defies the poverty and desolate situation she has been thrown in.

The picture was taken in 1984 by National Geographic's Steve McCurry and featured on the magazine's June 1985 cover for a special report on refugees.

The portrait of this nameless child puts a face to the outrageous statistics of refugees fleeing because of the 1978 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

The picture haunted Westerners and propelled many American agencies and volunteers to lend a helping hand to the hundreds of thousands of refugees along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Years later, even when the Soviets left Afghanistan, the picture still had its impact and went on to become an iconic photograph without a name — sold as posters even on the streets of Pakistan.

That propelled McCurry to head back several times to Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 1990s to search for the nameless girl. His efforts were unsuccessful.

When the September 11 attack on the United States put the Taliban's Afghanistan back on the minds of Americans, the image of the Afghan girl gained more attention.

This is when National Geographic's film writer Lawrence Cumbo suggested sending another team in search of the Afghan girl.

Nearly six years after Cumbo travelled to the war-torn Afghanistan-Pakistan border in search for the Afghan girl, he sits in the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi to recall the journey of a lifetime.

The journey

“I pitched the idea (to National Geographic) before September 11, 2001 but I couldn't get a green light on it, especially since the odds of finding her was one in seven million.

"After September 11, it was a relevant story and this was a great opportunity to go in,'' he said.

On January 2, 2002 less than four months after President George W. Bush declared “war on terror'' and launched a military campaign in Afghanistan, Cumbo and a sound-man entered the region with posters, brochures and a well-planned campaign to solve a 17-year-old mystery.

This attempt was different from the previous ones in that it included Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) personnel who would independently verify the identity of the Afghan girl using the latest eye-recognition technologies from Washington.

With a war being waged by his own country on Afghanistan, Cumbo's challenge was beyond finding this girl. “We could see from the air Daisy [Cutter] bombs, [15,000-pound bombs that are capable of destroying a mountain ridge]. You could feel the concussion from the plane,'' Cumbo said.

Shortly after landing in the region, Cumbo came to know that his wife was pregnant with their second child, which gave him further reason to get back home alive.

The search

The first move was to retrace the steps of photographer McCurry by going back to the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in Pakistan where the picture was taken.

Three days into the search, Cumbo, McCurry and the crew tracked down the teacher who was in charge at a school in the camp in 1984.

The teacher led them to a student who claimed the girl in the picture was her mother. On examining the photograph of the woman, the FBI turned up a negative result.

The eye bears more information than thumbprints do, which confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that this woman wasn't the one Cumbo's team was looking for. McCurry left to attend a show in Norway, with little hope that she would be found.

Three-and-a-half weeks into the search, Cumbo got another lead from two men who said they were certain they knew her and her brother when they were younger and they could lead Cumbo to her brother. The team entered Afghanistan again to go to a village.

“The first indication of feeling that we found her was when I saw her brother Kasser Khan, whose eyes are more striking than hers. I couldn't meet her as [I was] a man. I didn't see her eyes at first because she was veiled. She thought we were Soviets, she thought the Soviet invasion was still going on,'' Cumbo said.

It took several attempts by her mother-in-law to convince her that Cumbo and the crew meant her no harm. The challenge for Cumbo was to convince the woman to have her eyes photographed.

These pictures would be sent to the FBI laboratories in the US, to be checked for similarities with the ones taken in 1984.

“I asked her what she remembered about the day the photograph was taken. She recalled [the events] clearly because that was the only occasion she was photographed.

"She said she was in the school and a ‘white man' and her teacher had asked her to stay and this ‘white man' took a picture of her in the corner of a green tent.

"From what Steve had told me, I knew immediately that she was the girl, even though I didn't see her face,'' Cumbo added.

After the woman, Sharbat Gula, agreed to have her eyes photographed, the pictures were sent to the FBI for verification. The results were positive. This prompted McCurry to return to Afghanistan.

In an emotional reunion, Gula instantly recognised McCurry as the “white man'' who took her picture in the tent in 1984.

Gula, who was then 30, and her family drew the attention of the West, resurrecting the power of a 17-year-old image.

National Geographic aired a documentary about the rediscovery in March 2002 and a month later published a front cover picture with Gula holding the 1985 issue of the magazine on which she first appeared.

This was a new beginning for Gula and her family. Through a fund set up to help her family and other refugee girls in the region, National Geographic was able to buy a taxi for her husband so that he could work it, which helped send the couple's children to school.

As for Cumbo, he went home to his family despite a brief encounter that could have ended his life. “I was detained at gunpoint because I was filming women in a Peshawar market.

A man who claimed to be an officer accused me of being a spy for the CIA and wanted my camera,'' he said. The shouting match grabbed the attention of an armed military guard.

“The guard herded all of us into our van, including the guy who drew his gun on me. We went to a deserted place. There was a lot of collaboration between the guard and this man who had threatened me,'' Cumbo said.

It took several hours for Cumbo to convince the guard that he had come on the invitation of Rahi Mula, a respected journalist and Pashtun elder.

“They realised that harming me would only get them into big trouble,'' Cumbo added. After being taken to an airforce base and several hours of interrogation, Cumbo was set free.

Today, the picture remains the face of refugees — a simple, beautiful and captivating image that represents millions of children left to fend for themselves because of war.

Gripping subtlety

At Face of Asia, a photography exhibition at the Sharjah Museum, Gula's 1984 picture is among the many on display.

This image depicts no tears like that of a 1972 picture showing a naked child running after a bomb was “accidentally'' dropped on her village in South Vietnam.

It does not have the impact of a photograph taken on February 1, 1968 which depicts an emotionless South Vietnam policeman shooting a suspected Viet Cong soldier.

Nor does it represent the might of a man standing before a parade of tanks in China's Tiananmen Square in 1989. It also does not have the power of a 2003 photograph of a hooded Iraqi prisoner behind a barbed wire holding his son.

The Afghan girl's photograph is quiet but its subtleness is what has made it so gripping and its timeless message is what has made it so unforgettable.

The Face Of Asia exhibition is on at the Sharjah Art Museum until June 21.