Afghan immortalized on magazine cover is welcomed by Italy

Sharbat Gula, the green-eyed Afghan woman immortalized on a National Geographic magazine cover in 1985, arrived in Italy as part of an evacuation and reception program promoted by the European country.

“The Italian government facilitated and organized the transfer of Gula to Italy, in the broader context of a program for the evacuation of Afghan citizens”, points out an official statement.

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The measure was taken after the woman's pleas to leave the Afghanistan due to the seizure of power by the fundamentalist group Taliban, in August this year.

The Afghan woman was immortalized by photographer Steve McCurry in 1984, when she had just arrived at the Peshawar refugee camp in Pakistan, fleeing the Soviet war in her country.

At the time, she was just 12 years old, and the photo graced the cover of National Geographic in June 1985. Her intense gaze towards the camera led to her being called the “Mona Lisa of the Third World”.

After 17 years, in 2002, McCurry met Gula again in the Nasir Bagh refugee camp, also in Pakistan, and photographed her again. The portrait was published in the same magazine and shows her with the magnetic eyes that made her famous throughout the world.