In Afghanistan , "using" the spiritual “power” of sacred places "to heal" is not limited in treating patients with serious mental illnesses. It is quite common that other patients are taken to shrines for treatment as well. Beside indicating superstition, sing shrines as primary source of help crystallizes the lack of basic healthcare in Afghanistan .

One of such places is Mia Ji Baba Ziyarat. This Ziayrat (tomb) immortalizes “Sayed Najibullah Pacha”. “Said” in his name means “descendent of Profit Mohammad (PBUH). “Pacha” means king. It is customary in Pashtoon dominated areas of Afghanistan to add a suffix of “Pacha” or "Agha" to the name of a male “Sayed”. Most often, people do not pronounce the name at all, thus almost all “Said”s are called “Pacha sahib (sir)”. Pacha Sahib mean “sir king” and one can safely use this phrase to call any Sayed (basically one does not have to know a male said's name).  

Traditionally, an adult “Sayed 's” name has three parts: Sayed + a name given to the person by his parents + Pacha (a respectful acknowledgement that most Said enjoy after puberty). For Example, Sayed Najibullah as a child will become—Sayed Najibullah Pacha—or simply Pacha Sahib.

Mia Ji is another name for Sayed Najibullah Pacha. His shrine is now run by Said Najibullah Pacha's children and each year of his children dwells in a house attached to the shrine. It is a less than 20 miles for major city of Nangarhar Province of Afghanistan, Jalalabad. It is said that this shrine can heal people affected with neurological disorders as well as those bitten by snakes, scorpions and venomous spiders.

If a person has a stroke, most likely his children/relatives will take that person to this shrine for a hope of “cure”. While, there is dearth of healthcare facilities for minor health related issues, there are almost none in most areas in Afghanistan for stroke and CVAs. Thus, most strokes invariably result in functional neurological deficit (if not death). In a hope of improvement, such patients are taken to this shrine for help. Sometimes, people travel for days to get to this shrine!

At the shrine, one of the decedents of Mia ji sahib will perform some rituals that “deliver the healing”. The methods are “proprietary” and the shriners do not disclose how their “treatments” help the patients; however, there are two common categories of practices. One is reciting “iats” (verses) from Quran. Once the iats are recited, the healer then blows on the affected organ/extremity and that is called “dam”.

The second method is called “tawiz”. In this method, the shriner will write some sacred writing on a piece of paper and tightly encase it in leather or cloth and seal it with strong stitches(sometimes encase them again in small golden boxes). Thus, a tawiz cannot be easily opened. Tawiz are worn around the neck but can be tied to arm as well. It is believed that opening a “tawiz” may bring misfortune; thus most people never try to see what is written in it (when I was a boy, I opened one, there were just lines drawn in various angles to each other and at each other with some scattered words in what appeared like a random pattern; you could imagine, how frightened I was for the next few days).

Other common “illnesses” that are treated at this shrine are being possession by “Jin”. The closest analogy in the Western world would be the accounts of Jesus Christ delivering the men possessed and ordered the demons to go “into the pigs” or currently practiced exorcism in parts of the US. The shriners do not order the “jins” to go to someone/something else; they just “order them to leave the affected” persons. Since the “stroke” is caused by “demons/Jins”; the   . A large number of medical and psychiatric disroders are considered to be "possession by Jin" and thus "only a shrine--not medications--can help"

For their service, the shriners receives gifts from patients. The gifts are usually certain animals (for instance sheep or chicken) or grains (wheat, corn, rice, etc.). In return, the shriners will feed anyone who brings their patients to the shrine and the patients themselves. A person does not have to bring a gift (i.e. fee) for shriner's service. The shriner will perform his healing “procedure” without a pay, and the patients and their families almost always give a “gift” to the shriner, which is almost always, more than what shriner spends on the guests. Thus, at the end of the year, when another decedent of the Sayed Najibullah Pacha will occupy the shrine, the first one would have made a decent wage; and this practice has been going on for generations now.