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 in Jhang, to the shrine of Heer and Ranjha--the Romeo and Juliet of South Asia. Although there is disagreement 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 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 the shrine brought them together, though 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 their shared interest in the couple is evidence 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.