THERE are coughs and groans around me.

“Are you in pain again?” Fiza Bibi asks her six-year-old daughter, Tanzeela Bibi. The little girl does not move, but she closes her eyes.

The eerie silence prevailing at the graveyard at the Pir Muhib Jahanian shrine is occasionally broken by moans and quiet words of solace. Around me are 23 people of different ages lying in the sand, buried up to the neck under a venerable jalh tree. Tanzeela is one of them. These people’s families have buried them here in the belief that they will be cured. The shrine and its adjoining graveyard are nestled between the high mounds of sands on Shahjamal Road, 40 kilometres from Muzaffargarh city.

“The saint’s blessings are invoked to cure those who cannot be cured by worldly remedies,” says the caretaker of the shrine, Khalifa Saeen. He is busy allocating space to a woman who has come from Jhang, about 200 kilometres from here.

“This is our last hope,” says Tanzeela’s mother, pointing to the shrine. The child suffers from blood cancer. Since the girl was diagnosed a year ago, the family has spent all its resources — from four kanals of land to gold, cattle and borrowings — on her treatment at Nishtar Hospital in Multan. Now, the doctors have said that there is nothing further they can do. That was when the family was told by some relatives to try the sand burial treatment at Pir Muhib Jahanian.

Near Tanzeela’s sand mound is that of Ghulam Hashim. He is smiling and his head lolls from side to side. It is his sixth day here.

Khalifa Saeen says that a patient needs to be buried in the sand for six hours a day; the course needs to last nine days. This is May in southern Punjab, and the mercury is already touching 42 degrees Celsius. There is hardly any shade at the shrine, other than the jalh tree. Its cover is in any case glaringly insufficient for the mounds; but as the sun moves across the horizon, so does the shade. All the people buried here must endure the direct rays of the sun for some hours.

“It’s the saint’s miracle that the sand doesn’t heat up,” boasts Khalifa Saeen. “The little bit of warmth is what heals the wounds.”

Apart from some family members of the buried people, there are also some aged persons — helpers of the caretaker. One of them tells me that most of the people buried here are cancer patients, or suffer ailments that the doctors have been unable to diagnose. The sand treatment provides relief, he says, and of course health and happiness.

“How much do you charge for that?” I ask.

“Nothing special,” he says. “If you feel fully healed and happy, Khalifa Saeen accepts whatsoever handout you offer.”

Among the buried people is Sameena, a schoolteacher from Jhang. She says she had been unable to conceive despite the passage of five years in a marriage with her cousin. Then, she was told about the sand treatment. Last year, she visited the shrine, buried herself in the sand and was blessed with a son. This year, she has buried herself again, for she wants another child. She says that even though she continued seeing a gynaecologist in her town, she believes that the saint’s blessings work wonders.

Most of the visitors here have come from far-off places. But Ghulam Hussain, of the nearby Shahjamal town, is also here, a devotee of the saint. He says he visits the shrine every Thursday night to light a clay lamp. He says the sand treatment is a new phenomenon that emerged in recent years only. Earlier, people would come to the shrine to offer mannat on Thursdays.

“The rural health centre is thriving, which shows that a painkiller does cure people,” he says, but adds that the lack of health facilities for cancer and mental issues in southern Punjab force people to rely on superstitious methods. Personally, he doesn’t believe in the sand treatment. But he does visit the shrine every Thursday night: “The place is a realm of mystic enjoyment. As soon as I enter the shrine, time stops.”

District health authorities look at the healing method with disbelief, but are reluctant to take any action. Executive District Officer of Health, Dr Athar, says that modern medical science does not attest to such methods. Such remedies waste time, he explains, and in some cases the sand particles can worsen the infection. But, he says, they will not take any action against the shrine caretaker and the visitors because pledging mannat is a centuries-old remedy, hich is a sort of spiritual therapy as well.

Published in Dawn, May 24th, 2016