Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

Then she pulled out a tiny black-and-white dog-eared photograph. I
peeked at the picture and saw a very young man with sweet eyes staring up
at me.
Panti placed the photo face down on the stained plastic tablecloth.
He twirled the sastun in circles around the photograph, repeating a
Mayan chant.
“Sastun, sastun, with your great power,” he sang and went on to ask for
the boy’s safe return.
Panti gave her back the photograph and instructed her to place it upside
down in a pocket over her heart every Thursday and Friday and repeat,
“You are mine, come here, sit down, and stay.”
The young woman went to sit outside and wait for a ride as I motioned
for the square-built man to come into the hut.
He had greasy black hair and a sallow complexion. He looked as if he
hadn’t shaved or bathed in a few days. His clothes were rumpled, and a
fungus-ridden toenail escaped from a hole in his sneaker.
“What is your problem?” asked Don Elijio.
He hesitated, glancing at me.
Before he had a chance to say a word, Don Elijio said forcefully, “She is
with me. What I say, she says. What she says, I say.”
The man shrugged and pulled out a small photograph of a pretty young
girl from his wallet. She looked young enough to be his daughter.
“I want this girl for my own,” he muttered. “I had her father’s
permission to see her but then she changed her mind, just before our
wedding. I want her back. Can you help me?”
Don Elijio picked up the picture and turned it over. “Some people are
lucky with women,” he said. “I’ve been alone for many years and will
probably die that way.”
He enchanted the photo with his sastun, handed it back to the man, and
instructed him to place the photo upside down in his pocket every Friday
for nine weeks, repeating, “You are mine, come here, sit down, and stay.”
The man paid him five dollars and left hastily.
I watched him disappear down the road. As soon as he was out of
earshot, I turned to Don Elijio and asked, “What was that all about? Do you
enchant women often for men?”
“Yes, mamasita, I do it all the time,” he said matter-of-factly. “The
encanto lasts for six months only. During that time he must prove himself