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 Pakistan. Among them was the Hussaini family which fled their Kabul home for the relative safety of Pakistan. Most of the ten member family–five boys, three girls, two parents–remained in Pakistan for five years before emigrating to the United States in 2016. One son, who had served as an interpreter and translator for U.S. troops, preceded the family by four years, settling in New Mexico. With Afghanistan under Taliban control, family connections to the U.S. military meant the family risked…
