A headscarf hid the young woman's face as she passed by, but her message for a stranger asking why people would congregate at the graves of al Qaeda fighters was clear.
"Osama is in our hearts."
She was one of a handful of Afghan villagers who had come at daybreak to pray at a shrine for 39 al Qaeda fighters killed while taking refuge in a mosque close to the town of Khost, near the mountainous southeast border with Pakistan.
The mosque proved no protection against U.S. bombs that rained down three years ago at the outset of a campaign to destroy Osama bin Laden's militant network in Afghanistan.
The day after the attack, villagers retrieved the bodies from the rubble, buried them side by side and pooled money to turn the site into a shrine.
Today, a wall encloses the graves, but there is no roof.
Inside, visitors attach pieces of cloth and headscarves to the tops of the graves, both as a mark of respect and a token through which many believe the deceased will remember the visitor and ask God to fulfil their wishes.
They believe in miracles, according to Shayesta Gul. He looks after the shrine, which stands 15 metres (yards) from a government checkpoint on a road running through the arid plain to Khost town, a region dominated by ethnic Pashtun tribes.
Villagers are full of tales of the sick regaining their health and a blind man recovering his sight after visiting the shrine. Childless women flock there praying for a baby.
"Some people may regard what we have seen as a superstition," said Gul, tugging his salt and pepper beard.
"But there have been miracles and people have been cured."
AGAINST WAHHABI TEACHINGS
Khost province and bin Laden have a history. The al Qaeda leader ran militant training camps for jihadis, holy war warriors, in the mountains neighbouring Pakistan's tribal region of North Waziristan.
U.S.-led forces still scour the remote region hunting Taliban and al Qaeda members, although they suspect bin Laden fled Afghanistan some time ago.
It was here that U.S. Tomahawk Cruise missiles struck al Qaeda camps in retaliation for the bombing of U.S. embassies in East Africa in late 1998.
Bin Laden, Gul says, is regarded as a "companion of the Prophet". Storekeepers and shoppers in nearby Khost town call the world's most wanted man a hero and "a defender of Muslims".
Bin Laden himself would probably disapprove of the virtual canonisation of him and his followers.
The custom of adorning graves and creating shrines runs counter to the austere Wahhabi version of Islam that the Saudi-born al Qaeda leader espouses.
There have been stories of Arab al Qaeda fighters angering Pakistani and Afghan militants by desecrating graves of fallen comrades.
Wahhabism sprang out of the Arabian peninsula in the 18th century. When Wahhabi forces took Mecca in 1803 one of their first acts, according to some historical accounts, was to order the destruction of the domed tombs of the Prophet and the early caliphs.
OTHER SHRINES
But Afghanistan's Islamic traditions are different, fused with more mystical Sufi beliefs.
There are shrines to saints, poets and emperors whose conquests spread the faith through central Asia and the Indian subcontinent.
Conferring saintly status on dead al Qaeda fighters is not a one-off, confined to Khost.
A similar shrine was established on the outskirts of the southern city of Kandahar, where the bodies of 97 al Qaeda members lie buried.
"Women and children come to pay homage and pray, some from as far afield as Pakistan and Iran," says shrine caretaker Malang.
"I have seen blind people recover their sight and heard of barren women becoming pregnant after visiting the shrine. It is only a matter of belief," he said.
Kandahar authorities, spooked by the cult built up around the government's dead enemies, demolished the wall of the shrine and set up a checkpoint to deter visitors. But, Malang said, as soon as the checkpoint was abandoned the worshippers returned.