Search for Love and Fertility Leads to Pakistani Graveyard

For love-struck teenagers, newlyweds trying to conceive their first baby or lonely singles hoping to find the perfect mate, there’s only one place in Pakistan to seek help.

They come to a hilltop surrounded by a simple dirt cemetery, to the shrine of Heer and Ranjha -- the Romeo and Juliet of South Asia. Although there is disagreement about whether they were real or legendary, the couple’s star-crossed story has inspired centuries of flowery poetry.

Believers say the two are buried beneath the blue-, white- and green-tiled shrine, and they show up by the hundreds every day to pay homage in hopes that a visit will persuade God to grant them their desires.

“I came to the shrine a year ago to ask the saints to help me find my own true love,” said Shazia Akram, 27, a newlywed smiling alongside her strapping young husband, Mohammed Arshad. “Now I have found him, so we came back to say thank you.”

Akram has no doubt that the shrine brought them together, although their January marriage was arranged by her parents. Arshad says that even before he met his wife, he recited poetry about Heer and Ranjha and believes that their shared interest in the couple is evidence that the saints had a hand in their marriage.

“It’s God’s secret and nobody can know how the shrine works, but my husband and I are proof that it does,” Akram said after eating a pinch of salt from a bowl kept at the foot of the grave, then kneeling to pray before the tomb.

The salt is said to bring fortune and good health, although caretaker Mohammed Ramzan acknowledges that it is simply bought at the local market.

Yasmeen Khalid, 36, is at the shrine with her husband to thank the saints for finally giving them a son after the birth of six daughters -- considered bad luck in this deeply conservative country.

Khalid, wearing the all-encompassing black burka common for women in conservative families, says she visited doctors and bought amulets from spiritual leaders in an effort to produce a male heir. Nothing worked until they came to the tomb.

“My husband and I were becoming disappointed with every passing day. Relatives would hurl insults at me that I was unable to give birth to a boy,” she said, cradling her 8-month-old son in her arms. “I got this son from the shrine. I got him from the saintly couple buried here.”

According to the most famous poem about Heer and Ranjha, written in 1776 by Syed Waris Shah, Heer was the beautiful daughter of a wealthy patriarch, while Ranjha was forced out of his more modest family home after a quarrel with his brothers.

He met Heer and soon they were in love. She got her father to hire Ranjha as a shepherd and visited him in the woods each day.

After Heer’s evil uncle discovered the couple lying together, Ranjha was fired and Heer was ordered to marry another man. Eventually, Ranjha returned and Heer’s parents agreed to the marriage. But on the wedding day, Heer was poisoned by her uncle. A broken-hearted Ranjha lowered himself into her grave and died as well.

Their purported tomb in this central Pakistani town is constructed to look like a char poy, or traditional wooden bed. Around it, young grooms place their traditional wedding clothes and starched turbans. Women bring flowers and cloth, and some pay a small donation to light scented oils.

The affection that Pakistanis feel for the couple’s story is surprising, since their affair would be just as scandalous now as it was in their day. Even in moderate Pakistani homes, marriages are almost always arranged by parents and “love marriages” are frowned on.

Hundreds of Pakistani women who marry against their parents’ will or who are suspected of illicit affairs are killed or mutilated each year in “honor killings,” most at the hands of their husbands, fathers and brothers, the independent Human Rights Commission says.

“We will continue to hear stories like that of Heer and Ranjha unless people start respecting decisions made by couples,” said Kamla Hyat, the commission’s director.

That irony is lost on most visitors to the shrine.

“There is no truer love than that of Heer and Ranjha,” said Akram, clutching her new husband’s arm. “My husband and I will never be able to compete with their love, but we can try.”