Sozni is not embroidery so much as handwriting. Each artisan holds a needle finer than a chinar stem, and across three hundred days he composes a single field of flowers no wider than a palm.
Ghulam Nabi learned the stitch from his father, who learned it from his. He does not draw the pattern first; he reads it from memory, the way one recites a half-remembered prayer.
When the shawl is finished, the back is as clean as the front. That, he says, is the only signature that matters.
