Entrepreneur taps paper's storied past

KONI GHIL, Uzbekistan - The passage of time seems to have slowed down at Zarif Mukhtarov's paper mill in a village not far from Uzbekistan's Silk Road city of Samarkand.

Here in the countryside, where rulers of the Timurid Empire once sought a verdant sanctuary from their bustling capital, geese sidle by in pairs and tourists feast on pilau made with local rice from clayrich soil.

Mukhtarov, a 62-year-old Samarkand native, was a potter like his father before he set about reviving a papermaking technique coveted for centuries by much of the known world.