Absolutely Fascinating...

Gauracandra · March 14, 2002

This is absolutely amazing. I remember this cover of National Geographic because it is so timeless. A few months back NG put out a compilation of its best photographs ever, and this was the one that was nominated as the very best of the best. I completely have to agree. It is just piercing with intensity. Now, they have located this woman by chance in Afghanistan. I have always wondered what ever happened to her, now we can see. This is just an incredible story I think.

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Where are those haunting eyes now?

National Geographic

finds Afghan woman from famed photo

Sharbat Gula captivated audiences with her haunting green eyes when she appeared on the cover of National Geographic in 1985. Her picture has now been taken again, 17 years later.

By Bob Faw

NBC NEWS

March 12 — Over the years, the covers of the venerable National Geographic magazine have given us so many indelible images, including a hauntingly beautiful young Afghan woman. That was 17 years ago, and since then she’s become a kind of lost poster child for that beleaguered nation. Until now.

THE PHOTOGRAPH is unforgettable: an orphan from Afghanistan with eyes that don’t just penetrate — they haunt.

“It was beyond, I think, the person in it,” says National Geographic host Boyd Matson. “It was what she represented, a symbol of a people who were in a struggle and desperate for survival.”

Veteran National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry took the photograph in a Pakistani refugee camp in 1984.

Beneath the burka, Sharbat Gula holds her portrait, which became the most famous picture ever to appear on the cover of National Geographic magazine. The April issue is on newsstands April 1.

“I don’t think a day has gone by in the last 17 years that I haven’t received a letter, request or phone call asking, ‘Where is she,’” says McCurry.

And ever since, McCurry has tried to find her. He was told it was impossible, that she had either disappeared in the camps or had died.

Finally, in January, he made one last appeal in the camp where the photo was taken.

“We’re doing that with the magazine — carrying it around the streets of Pakistan,” says Matson, “saying, ‘Do you know this woman?’ And suddenly a guy says, ‘I grew up next to her!’ ”

McCurry was even more stunned when the neighbor returned with the girl’s brother.

March 12 — Sharbat Gula bewitched the world 17 years ago, with her green-eyed gaze. Since then, she has lived a hard life. NBC’s Bob Faw reports.

“He went into Afghanistan,” says McCurry. “We thought, ‘We’ll never see him again.’ And lo and behold, he came back with his sister. It was a miracle.”

For the woman — Sharbat Gula — the photo was a revelation but not a surprise.

“She said: ‘I’ve never seen it before. But that’s definitely me.’ And she remembered it so vividly because it’s the only day in her life her picture had ever been taken,” says Matson.

Now a wife and mother, she lives in a remote Afghan village, prays, wears a burqa and draws water from wells.

“Life is very difficult for her,” says McCurry. “I think she has survived remarkably well.”

But is she the right person? National Geographic hired experts to electronically scan the irises of the original and new photos.

“And after going through all their calculations, they came up 99.9 percent sure this is the same person,” says Matson.

Eighteen years later, the past and present were brought together.

“I think she certainly is an icon, I think she is emblematic of the Afghan spirit, the Afghan people and the fortitude of these people, the will to survive,” says McCurry.

Then and now.