A Doctor in Iraq, Watching a Faith Healer at Work

By AMIR A. AFKHAMI, M.D.
NYT

IRBIL, Iraq — “Are you a Muslim, Dr. Amir?”

The question took me aback, as it would any American psychiatrist wary of self-disclosure. But this was Iraq, where religion is central to people’s lives and identities. So after a slight pause, I responded with a halfhearted affirmative to the mullah I had come to see.

Mullah Eskandar was a faith healer — a youngish, tanned, bearded man in a flowing white dishdasha and a matching skullcap. Seated on a rug in his reception area with an oversize poster of the sacred Kaaba in Mecca, he emanated authority and sageness despite his relative youth.

I had heard about faith healers during my years of travel to Iraq. They were alternately maligned as charlatans who preyed on a superstitious population, and praised as filling a void, particularly in mental health care, in a country that had seen an exodus of physicians. So when an Iraqi colleague offered to introduce me to a faith healer, I jumped at the opportunity.

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