Between the Sacred and the Suffering: Ritual Healing, Dargahs, and the Endurance of Supernatural Belief in South Asia
I. An Invitation to Look Without Judging Imagine this. It is early morning — perhaps four o'clock — in the ancient city of Lahore. The streets are still dark. A man in his early forties, a schoolteacher, has been awake for hours. He has a seven-year-old daughter. For three months, she has suffered from unexplained seizures. He has taken her to two hospitals. The neurologist has adjusted her medication twice. The MRI shows nothing definitive. The seizures continue. Tonight, the schoolteacher has brought his daughter to Data Darbar — one of the largest Sufi shrines in all of South Asia, the tomb of the eleventh-century saint Hazrat Ali Hujwiri. Thousands of people mill about in the warm night. Qawwali music — devotional Sufi poetry set to rhythm — fills the air. The teacher sits beside his daughter, his hands raised in supplication, tears running down his face. He is praying to the saint, who has been dead for nearly a thousand years, to heal his child. Now. B...