On the surface of it, the army officers died in an accident. They weren't killed in an encounter, or terrorist attack like the Japanese diplomats or Italian soldiers in Iraq. Yet the nation felt the pangs of a Greek tragedy as it received the news of its fallen heroes. They were the sons of our soil, who died in a faraway country. We felt sorry for them and sympathised with their families. We also felt we had lost our heroes and mourned their death.

But how was their death different from the death of those French tourists, who went down to their watery graves in Egypt, or the death of 30,000 people who perished in the deadly earthquake in the Iranian city of Bam? These soldiers weren't defending peace when they died; they weren't fighting any battle or patrolling any border at the time of their death. Death snuck up on them like it snuck up on others.

Yet we sublimated those fifteen deaths to heroism. We draped their coffins in national flag, and gave them a state funeral. We declared a day of mourning for them and lowered our flag to half-mast. They were the tragic heroes, men who had the ability to achieve greatness but who through a weakness, fell into their deaths. And that weakness was their fate, the scheme of life ordained by God, who wanted them to die sooner than later.

Heroes are obviously different from others, their death meant to create a purifying sense amongst those who live and feel pity for them. The fate of the tragic heroes is awe-inspiring because of the terrible woes they suffer and the fear they inculcate by making others aware of the forces in the world powerful enough to topple even the most mighty and admirable men. The heroes are people, who dare to reach out beyond reasonable limits in quest of some glorious deal and stir others with that spectacle of human greatness to liberate them from all that is dull, petty and mean in life.

There are times when ordinary man dies heroic death. Noor Hussain was an unknown youth who laid down his life for democratic movement and earned his place as a hero in the nation's heart. But then the hero also dies ordinary death. Lawrence of Arabia got killed in a motorcycle accident in UK, his death bearing no resemblance to his earlier greatness.

It is said that the original sin of the Greek tragic hero is hubris, which is a belief that one is god-like, and he must suffer for that reason, which is a punishment imposed upon him by the angry gods. One could argue that the fifteen soldiers, who were engaged in peacekeeping in a violent world, stoked the ire of God by confronting His work. Hence death came to them as divine wrath, cut down at the prime of their lives, leaving behind young children, newly wed wives, parents too old to bear that loss.

But then people die like that all the time, gone at the abrupt pull of the string by the Great Puppeteer. Not everyone, who dies becomes a hero, not everyone, who dies in a plane crash, boat capsize, road accident, flood, cyclone and any other disaster. Heroes must die for a cause larger than life, their death signifying something more than the last breath, something more than the end of one's earthly times.

Then how did the fifteen soldiers, who died in a plane crash, become heroes? They were soldiers returning home on holidays. Would they have been heroes if they had died in an accident on their way home from the airport? Would we have then kept our flag at half-mast or draped their coffins in it to honour them? Their deaths would have still saddened us, no doubt. We would have still felt sorry for their families. But would we have thought of them as heroes?

Perhaps the reason why we treated them as heroes is because they came closest to the specifications by being soldiers on a UN mission, who met tragic death on their way home. They died in another country, while engaged in an honourable profession, serving a noble cause. We wouldn't have given them a hero's welcome if they had returned alive. And if you think hard, you would know that what we did was cathartic, our repressed emotions finding way in a sudden outpour. It worked like a delusion. We believed in something we never had.

And that delusion didn't last very long. We buried them, mourned their death and returned to normal. We no longer talk about them and the passion of the week ran out while the bodies of the dead soldiers are still warm in their graves. A surefire test of heroes is that they don't die in vain. Why have those fifteen soldiers died? What should we remember them for? We don't know the answers, and we don't even dare to ask these questions.

Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, writes in the Memoirs of the Reign of King George II, "While he felt like a victim, he acted like a hero." While those fifteen army officers died like victims, they have been buried like heroes. Nothing is wrong with it. Nothing is wrong with honouring the dead. It made us feel good. It gave strength to the families to suffer their loss.

Where would we find strength in that loss? Heroes are supposed to outlive themselves in the mark of greatness, which they exemplify. If anything our make-believe heroes have exemplified, it is our aspiration for heroes in the national life. We don't have heroes and we need them, by Jove! An unhappy land is waiting for its heroes.

F. Scott Fitzerald is an American novelist who was confident that if you showed him a hero, he would write you a tragedy. Every hero is the outcome of a tragedy, but it isn't always true the other way round. Tragedies, particularly death, don't always make heroes. People have asked me in the past week if the fifteen soldiers, whom we buried, were heroes. How were they different from the people who have died in so many calamities but were never recognised as heroes?

Every death diminishes us, some more than others. But the death of the fifteen soldiers has diminished us twice. Once for the loss of soldiers, our worthy sons, and again for reminding us that we need heroes. Beyond that I can't judge.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.