Despite all the evidence, it is not ready to accept a divine power is healing patients. But it is not me who is doing this. It is the Koran. Good medical care has been difficult in Iraq since the United Nations imposed sanctions on the country for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait. At the Baghdad Nuclear Medicine hospital, workers labor over the broken thermostat of an outdated X-ray developing machine while in the next room a technician watches the screen of the one organ scanner still working.
Cancer patients slump in their wheelchairs or collapse on the floor.
Old women with the swollen throats of thyroid illness crowd around harried doctors, who speak of shortages of medicine and spare parts to fix diagnostic equipment. Judging by traffic through the cleric's two-story home in the upper middle class suburb, there is no shortage of belief. Women drift in and out of the room set aside for them as Abdel-Wahab's wife holds court in an armchair. She smiles knowingly as some women whisper their troubles in her ear. The regular clients just fold themselves at her feet and bend their heads forward, waiting for her touch.