USSR. Tadjikistan. Seventy years of active atheism did not make Muslims give up their belief in the healing power of the saints. In Gilikul, a young boy who lost sensation in his leg after he was administered a wrong drug is taken to the shrine of Zain Abbedine. He is immersed in the muddy waters to be healed. His father is a senior civil servant in Uzbekistan -and therefore a communist- who came to the shrine in desperation after doctors had given up hope for his son. 1990.