National Geographic has tracked down the subject of one of its most famous covers ever. The beautiful Pashtun girl with bright green eyes could have been a supermodel here in the west; instead, she married, bore 4 children, lived through 17 more years of war and poverty, and wears the veil. Sharbat Gula’s new portrait, when juxtaposed with the old, is just as powerful. The eyes are paler now, the veil is duller, the face fuller, the stare now more weary than defiant. Seventeen years seem to have passed so fast since I first saw the picture as a teenager in Sydney. I’ve often stared back at the original portait, and sometimes wondered where and what she was up to. The story is in the April 2002 issue of National Geographic Magazine.
The pain os her beautiful eyes make people realize how they should stop the nonsens in the world!!
The pain in her beautiful eyes makes people realize how they should stop the nonsens in the world!!Help these people out with the millions of money you have..don’t be selfish!!
This is the single most naturally beautiful woman to ever grace this earth. There is a God.
her eyes are the dimostration of the fear in the world…but in the same time is the personification of wild.
WOW…those eyes can pierce through a person’s soul. As an AFGHAN female myself, I’m proud to say that not only she is gorgeous, but she also has to be one of the STRONGEST females to have survived such hardships and still look AMAzzZING!
I am an argentinian’ boy. My english is bad and im doing my best to write this. Here, in Argentina, we are in pain and the cause is the FMI and the Religion. I’ve 20 year and I am student of engineering but a lots of people are living under the line of poor. Please, americans, change your concepts about the rest of the world… we are people too!!!!
Sebastian: Your comment touched me. First, your English is very good; you spell & articulate your thoughts very well. Second, speaking as a Canadian woman, I feel that what feeds the ignorance & banality in our western society is a lack of education. Our schools only epitomize events in history that ultimately perpetuate this false patriotism. If we are to survive as a race — the human race, the only race of the human kind — we need to feel & live with a pride for the collective of all walks of life across this glorious planet of ours. We need to understand our differences, practice patience & acceptance, tempering curiosity with tolerance. To quote the band The Beatles, truly “all we need is love”. I wish love for this world & pray that I remember this when faced with apathy & discrimination. I know that it’s hard to turn to love when there is so much anger & hate in this world. Perhaps we can do this together through expressing our sentiments like we are here? May the day be kind to you, Sebastian, and never lose hope or your voice to express this hope. God bless.
Sharbat Gula, Shes the daughter of a land that stares at gods eyes and all its creations her face is the face of a nation. through her stricking fearfull yes defiant eyes one can truly see the answer to the causes of the suffering of millions of her fellow country men and women, which was exported to the world. there is a vanishing point in this portrait that ocupies the eye to the point of obsession taking you to another place. A place where the naswers of the worlds good and bad is vividly visible.
I am proud of having Sharbat Gula, the Afghan girl.
She is so nice, so pure and so holy.
I’m not sure what it is about them, but her eyes, they could burn through any persons soul right to the heart. They are shining and bright yet they are also sad and somehow make a person feel alone and guilty. When you look at them the collors and emotions that they rep. are heart renching. I’m only 12 but they still can effect me and I’m sure anyone else that has ever even taken a glance at them.
I don’t think anyone was surprised to see that Sharbat’s portrait once again graced the cover of National Geographics 100 Best Photographs. Her portrait is the defintion of art because in her eyes we are able to see the hardships that she has endured and at the same time the perserverance of the human spirit in the most difficult circumstances.
We are all different, yet all the same. It is important to remember that we all feel the same emotions no matter where we come from. Her image will continue to represent the tradgedy and innocence of war for many years to come.
Wow. What an amazigngly beautiful woman. Her eyes are so piercing and so captivating. If you look really closely and try to move, it’s as if her eyes follow you. How mysterious, how exquisite! God must’ve been in a really good mood when he created her. Congratulations to the photographer as well. Sadly though, she looks much less defiant in her older picture than in her younger one. This does not take away from her fixating gaze though. Wow, I feel like I’m in a trance.
When I first heard about her I didn’t see how eyes alone could be so amazing. Then I saw them. Althought I don’t agree that her eyes are green. In the middle I see amber with brown flecks, then pale blue-green, and encircling all of that, I see deep blue. Sharbat Gula has rainbow eyes, each colors helps us to understand how much un-needed hardship there is in the world. But then again, I’m only 13. What could I know?
When I first heard about her I didn’t see how eyes alone could be so amazing. Then I saw them. Althought I don’t agree that her eyes are green. In the middle I see amber with brown flecks, then pale blue-green, and encircling all of that, I see deep blue. Sharbat Gula has rainbow eyes, each color helps us to understand how much un-needed hardship there is in the world. But then again, I’m only 13. What could I know?
When I first heard about her I didn’t see how eyes alone could be so amazing. Then I saw them. Althought I don’t agree that her eyes are green. In the middle I see amber with brown flecks, then pale blue-green, and encircling all of that, I see deep blue. Sharbat Gula has rainbow eyes, each color helps us to understand how much un-needed hardship there is in the world. But then again, I’m only 13. What could I know?
I don’t think that those two people are the same. They looke alike but they have differences. Anyway though the first picture is very captavating. The thought that a person who could have been a top model went through war instead makes you wonder what other kinds of people are trapped in war=torn countries.
That poor beautiful woman. What have they done to her? She looks like 40 miles of bad road. I can still see the girl, but under that horrid burqa thing she has age 40 years, not 17.
Nice work aging women that way. What a shame. Her eyes are still intense, but show more pain than the defiance like beaten out of her.
i cried when i saw this picture.
its totally amazing…her eyes r so unbelievably deep…n they say so much…esp in the first picture..u look at it once n den u cant ignore it,u cant just turn away…she must b so strong…i
although she looks weak n tired in the older picture n it just brings me 2 tears….i wish God wud end misery of such ppl,they dont deserve this…
WOW!!!!!!!!!!!
Thats all i can say!!
WOW!
WOW!
Im sure that theres way more words
to decribe this photo but im out of
words right now!
WOW!!!
shes so beautiful, like a peice of art.
In the original photograph, her eyes look like she has the thousand yard stare. That is a phrase used to describe a look that happens after trauma, when the brain is unable to process what happened. You can look up “thousand yard stare” and see other photos. Considering she had lost her parents and home, it’s not unlikely. The second one, yes she looks a lot sadder. The world makes no sense.
Her nose is more pointy and slender in the second picture…But her eyes still pierce the soul