'Unhappy is the land that breeds no hero.
. . . Unhappy is the land that needs a hero.'
-- Bertolt Brecht, German playwright
SARICHA, Afghanistan -- On a lonely hilltop, overlooking the steel blue waters of the Panjshir River lies the man many Afghans call a martyr.
His grave sits inside a small shelter, held up by pine posts and covered with sheets of tin. A dried blanket of purple and yellow wildflowers and a green shroud adorn the dirt plot.
A wooden sign on the wall reads: "Don't think of those who died doing the work of Allah. They are not dead. They are alive and being fed by Allah."
The hilltop appears deserted until a man, wearing a camouflage jacket, combat boots and a flat brown pakul -- the native cap of the Panjshir Valley -- walks into the room and starts rearranging the flowers.
"A thousand people visit here a day," says the man, who gives only his first name, Zabiullah. "They come from all over the country. Today, there's already been three or four hundred."
But right now there's no one -- except Zabiullah and the wind, which screams through the place like an angry ghost.
Zabiullah, 29, is caretaker of the grave of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the legendary commander from the Panjshir Valley, who for two decades rebuffed invasions by the Soviet Union and later the Taliban, until he was assassinated on Sept. 9.
Massoud's troops, part of the Northern Alliance, marched to victory in Kabul without him, and many of his deputies inherited powerful positions in the interim Afghan government.
But the commander's place in history remains uncertain. After his death, the Northern Alliance went on to defeat the Taliban, but only with the help of the United States. In Kabul, his portrait is plastered in ministries, in restaurants and on storefronts. There are Massoud calendars, postcards, even Massoud rugs.
But there are many Afghans, particularly Pashtuns, the ethnic majority, who say the Northern Alliance -- mostly ethnic Tajiks -- doesn't deserve much power. They say Massoud's following is greatly exaggerated and his mystique contrived.
The debate seems far from the Panjshir Valley, a three-hour drive from Kabul -- through jagged mountains, adobe-style villages and green wheat fields to Saricha, where Zabiullah stands guard on the Chief of the Martyrs Hill, waiting for the visitors to arrive.
ZABIULLAH FINISHES arranging the flowers in the shrine and heads back to an olive-green military bus parked nearby. Climbing a ladder into the cabin, he finds Essa, 23, another caretaker, asleep on the floor.
Essa and Zabiullah are part of a small group of caretakers. They live together in the bus, which is about 12 feet long and 8 feet wide. There's a red carpet on the floor, cushions along the sides and a pile of shoes at the door. On the wall hangs a yellowing newspaper picture of Massoud, surrounded by a shimmering, pink plastic wreath.
Sham Sudima, 13, stands barefoot by the door, preparing the tea. The men introduce the boy with the bright eyes and a buzzcut as their "colleague." Neither Zabiullah or Essa have children of their own and Sudima comes to Martyrs Hill mostly to keep the men company.
But when he grows up, he has bigger plans. "He wants to be a commander," Zabiullah says.
Essa joined the Mujahideen when he was a teenager; Zabiullah joined when he was 7, he thinks. "I remember I wasn't big enough to hold a gun," he says. Both men say their fighting days are over.
"It's somebody else's turn to fight," says Essa, shaking off sleep and pouring a cup of tea.
The caretakers recite facts about Massoud's life, from memory. He was born in Jangalak, a short drive north of the gravesite. He had six children. He was 49.
The men say Massoud was an educated man and a great fighter. Above all, he was a "good Muslim," they say.
"The people of the Panjshir Valley wanted to live free and not have foreigners as leaders," Essa says. "Massoud wanted the same thing."
MASSOUD STARTED his career as a rebel in the mid-1970s. As a college dropout, he joined with other young Afghans to stage attacks against the communist government. After the Soviet invasion in 1979, Massoud organized a pack of guerrilla fighters to protect his home, the Panjshir.
The Red Army made numerous attempts to occupy this valley during the decade-long war in Afghanistan. Each time, Massoud pushed them out.
One of Massoud's greatest assets was the Panjshir itself. The main route into the valley is a rocky road, snaking above a river and surrounded by mountains on all sides.
It's the perfect setting for an ambush.
As convoys of Soviet tanks and armored vehicles traveled along the road, Massoud's men attacked them at both ends, leaving the soldiers without an escape. Guerrillas in the mountains pelted the invaders from above.
Massoud's legacy can still be seen driving through the Panjshir. Soviet tanks line the road like monuments to a fallen army. Villagers use tanks to plug washed-out portions of the road. Other vehicles have been swallowed by the river.
"He was the champion of Afghanistan," Zabiullah says.
But not all of Afghanistan.
During the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, Massoud's forces -- the Jamiat-i-Islami -- were accused of killing and tormenting Afghan civilians.
According to the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, Massoud's forces were responsible for raping women and looting homes and shops after capturing a predominately Hazara neighborhood in Kabul in March 1995.
In September 1998, Massoud's forces fired several rockets into a crowded market in northern Kabul, killing scores of civilians. The International Committee of the Red Cross called the attacks the city's deadliest in three years.
ON MARTYRS HILL, the afternoon sky fills with swirling gray clouds, as a storm moves through the valley.
About an hour has passed and the men have finished two cups of tea. Essa thumbs through a notebook that the caretakers ask all visitors to sign at the gravesite.
Zabiullah pokes his head outside the bus.
There are still no visitors.
THE DAY Massoud was attacked, Zabiullah was training in the mountains about a kilometer away. By the time he reached the scene, Massoud's attackers, two Arabs posing as journalists, were dead, and Massoud had been airlifted by helicopter to Tajikistan, Zabiullah said.
"We thought that he was injured." They didn't know how seriously.
A few days later, Zabiullah said, the troops were told to recite the Koran and pray for their commander. Although they believe that Massoud died several days after the Sept. 9 attack, published reports say he was killed instantly. "It was related to al Qaida," says Zabiullah with certainty. "If Massoud was not killed, the accident of Sept. 11 would not have happened. They were afraid of Massoud."
By 2001, most of Afghanistan had given way to the Taliban. And Massoud's forces -- known collectively as the Northern Alliance -- were pushed into a corner of northeast Afghanistan.
The Taliban hoped that without Massoud, the Northern Alliance would collapse. They were wrong.
"We lost our leader, but we didn't lose ourselves," Zabiullah says. "We didn't show our emotions. If we did that, we would have lost our concentration."
Essa says they were reminded of Massoud's own prediction that if he died, one group, for better or worse, would rule the country because the resistance would collapse.
"Massoud himself said 'after my death, there will be peace in Afghanistan,' " Essa recalls.
IT'S BEEN MORE than an hour, and a lone visitor quietly approaches the grave. After a few minutes inside, he emerges, pauses in front of the sweeping vista and heads back down the hill.
The caretakers say they are planning to build a larger, more elaborate shrine, but they are not sure when that will happen. In the meantime, a work crew is making improvements to the steep, winding road that leads to the site.
Zabiullah walks over to the tomb and re-attaches a green cloth sheet, emblazoned with Massoud's portrait.
Then he ducks out of the wind and dissappears into the shrine to wait for the visitors.
