Afghan Kebab House – Albuquerque, New Mexico
The juxtoposition of beauty, humanity and tragedy may best be exemplified by a photographic portrait taken in 1984 that graced the cover of National Geographic. Christened “Afghan Girl,” the photograph depicted Sharbat Gula, a 12-year-old Afghan refugee in Pakistan during the Soviet-Afghan War. Widely described as the “First World’s Third World Mona Lisa,” the image became a rallying cry for compassion among the Western world for the attrocities being committed in Afghanistan. CNN called it the world’s most famous photograph. A framed photograph of the green-eyed Afghan girl hangs prominently on one wall of Albuquerque’s Afghan House. Since 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, more than four-million people have fled the violence and crossed over the border into neighboring…