The 2006 war image of Barbie Girl was made right after the 2006 war. It became the cover of my first book Ordinary Lives. The crane and wrecking ball in the background were destroying the buildings that were not salvageable. People who lived in these apartments would come and wait all day for the buildings to fall down to go look for their belongings in the rubble. The woman on the left is Barbie Girl’s aunt. She is smiling as she looks at her niece. The little girl looks like a phoenix rising out of the ashes.

In 2024, someone posted that image on Instagram and people tagged the family. I found Barbie Girl and found out that her name was Lynn. We connected. She is now a young woman studying in Belgium. We overlapped for a day in December of 2024 and met at her aunt’s destroyed apartment. That same aunt lost her apartment 18 years later, in the last hours of bombing before the ceasefire. Same war 18 years apart. Here again, Lynn seems to be rising above the destruction.