Steve McCurry had found her in Pakistan in a refugee camp under a tent that served as a school. She was a twelve year old girl in that famous photo. Her name is Sharbat and she fled Afghanistan at the age of six with her grandmother and her younger brother after both of her parents died under the bombs of the Soviet invaders. She agreed to pose for McCurry on the condition that she was not asked to smile because, according to the rules of her tribe, a female who gives confidences to strangers must be punished. Thanks to this shot, Sharbat becomes famous throughout the world even if she doesn't know she is, because, obviously, there were no Western media in her refugee camp. Twenty years later the great photographer returns to Peshawar with one goal: to find the model more famous than him. She didn't even know her name but, by showing her photo, they finally take him to a refugee camp where he finds her again. He recognizes her by her eyes and lips. For everything else, unfortunately she had had a rather hard life. Another twelve years have passed since that new meeting. Sharbat has passed forty and on a bulletin board in Peshawar, a third image of her has appeared. It is a mug shot of the Pakistani police who reported the ex-Afghan girl for having falsified the documents of her and her children in a desperate attempt to finally obtain Pakistani citizenship after forty years.
A few more years pass, in 2021 Sharbat Gula is finally rescued and transferred here, to Italy, home of that genius Leonardo who painted the Mona Lisa, to perhaps finally close the circle of what is the Mona Lisa of our century.
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