Sialkot, Pakistan – Ansar Majeed holds out her hands for inspection. The fingers are thickened, the tips calloused after decades of pulling waxed thread through the panels of a football. The skin around her knuckles is smooth in some places, cracked in others. Her nails are cut short so they won't snag the thread. Her hands return to the ball clamped in the wooden frame before her, the needle already threaded and ready.
Around her, the low-ceilinged sewing center hums with conversation. The whitewashed walls are decorated with murals painted by her daughter. About 25 women, aged 16 to 55, sit on low stools with their kits spread around them, pulling waxed polyester thread through pre-punched holes.
A woman rises from a red-and-yellow chatai (mat) to fetch a glass of iced water from the cooler in the middle of the room. Above, ceiling fans whirl at full speed to push the hot air out. Beyond the curtains drawn across the edge of the room, opening onto a south-facing courtyard, another Punjabi summer bears down on Sambrial, a suburb of Sialkot in northeastern Pakistan.
For generations, this region has helped supply the world's footballs. The city's relationship with the biggest football tournament spans decades. In 1982, Sialkot-based manufacturer Sublime Sports produced Adidas's Tango Espana, the first official World Cup ball made in Pakistan. More recently, every official World Cup ball since the 2014 tournament has been manufactured in Sialkot. Although the official match balls are produced in factories, each tournament triggers a surge in demand for footballs, boosting orders for hand-stitched training and souvenir balls, which in turn provides extra work for the city's many stitchers.
But the rhythm of hand-stitching is fading. Machine-made and heat-bonded balls now dominate production, with hand-stitching mostly limited to premium, retail, and promotional balls. The women gathered here know that each order may be followed by weeks of silence, even as local manufacturing partners of global brands continue to place those specialized orders.
