Baghdad, Iraq - A young Iraqi boy, traumatised by the war raging around his Baghdad home, walks into a small, tidy office in a back street of the Iraqi capital clutching his mother's hand.
Terrified by the thunder of US helicopters above the city skyline, he has been brought in to cure him of his fears.
The little room is a kind of clinic -- a clinic with a difference. It has no shelves of medicines, nor a bed for examining patients.
What it has is a small wooden stand next to one of the walls on which lies a thick copy of the Koran. Behind it sits a man dressed in the traditional Iraqi dress of a white dishdasha robe and black headgear.
The woman tells the man about her son's fright when he sees an American soldier and of the fear that grips him when he sees coalition aircraft.
Nusayif Jassem Mu'min, a Shiite sheikh in his 50s, puts his hand on the boy's head and starts reading from the Koran, seeking to scare away the boy's fears and heal his worries.
Mu'min is one of Baghdad's mystic doctors. Instead of medical qualifications he has a degree in Islamic studies. He is popular for his healing touch and for his clinic's mixture of religion and traditional cures.
Under Saddam Hussein, Mu'min's mystical brand of Shiite Islam was considered suspect and his practice was raided many times. Since US forces overthrew the dictator, he has been free to work and his patients are multiplying.
He reads verses from the Koran and statements made by the Prophet Mohammed as a tool to treat people. He also uses speeches of imams and Islamic teachers, which he recites to the patients.
"I started my career using some medicinal herbs and Koranic verses and speeches of the prophet," says Mu'min who inherited the skill from his father and has been practising it since 1985.
"My work is inherited from my father and ancestors," he says.
"I usually treat people suffering from madness and demonic possession. I also receive those with chronic-diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes, and female infertility.
"I use herbs, which are much better and safer than man-made pharmaceuticals," he explains, claiming that he once cured a cancer in just three days using only holy water and Koranic verses.
In another example, he says: "I treated a female child of 12 who was suffering from a year-long paralysis. I treated her in my own way using the holy book. She started walking normally the next day."
"I don't ask for money. They give token gifts to me once they recover," he says, adding that he often passed cash donations on to needy families.
Rashad Majeed, a frail 23-year-old, is a fan.
"The herbs given to me by the sheikh have good results. I feel different when I come here as God and the words of the Koran are my comfort," he says.
Secondary school teacher Hadi Abdul-Kareem has suffered insomnia since the horrors of the war came to his neighbourhood.
"When I see killings in the streets, the image never leaves me," he says. He couldn't sleep before, but the sheikh's care is "successful 100 percent".
It is too early to tell whether Mu'min's gentle ministrations will calm the young boy's fears of the helicopters and armed men on his street, but the healer will try.
"Wars have intensified pressure on men. The return to God is the best solution to ailments which doctors have failed to deal with," Mu'min advises.