Flight of the Diamond Smugglers

by Unknown

  Back at the mine, Msizi is covered in sludge up to his thighs, elbows. He feels mummified, plaster-cast. The earth burbles at his feet like farina. Men shout at other men, beat other men. Two diggers sing a song that begins with the words “Mayibute Afrika,” before they are silenced by the boot heels of mine security. Msizi imagines himself the only boy in a city of vampires, and indeed the mine resembles such an intricate city, webbed with aerial ropeways, stout ladders joining the stepped catacombs and blind alleys, pyramids, plateaus, arroyos of mud. He prays he will not be hurt today, will not slip and fall, be beaten back to his feet by some vampire whose eyes are hidden beneath the visor of a guard’s cap.

  Msizi wonders where his bird is. He gives thanks for miracles already come to pass—that he and his lunchbox received only a dummy scan from the X-ray machine today; that no one noticed as Bartholomew wriggled fully loaded from his cupped hands. The sun is strong, and Msizi gives thanks for its brightness, for the way in which it blinds the guards who scan the sky.

  Shirtless men pass by carrying blue stretchers. Sometimes, on these stretchers, mounds of diamondiferous gravel; sometimes a man’s broken body. One can only dig into the earth so deep before the earth decides to collapse.

  The dust whirls red and white below the bird as he passes over the unearthly Klipbakke, the sun-bleached rock bowls, huge amphitheaters gouged into the scrub.

  Some time ago, when Msizi first began to train him, Bartholomew injured his left leg. Msizi held him and sang to him; Bartholomew squirmed, then calmed, as Msizi wrapped his leg in newspaper, fashioned a cast from a lengthwise-cut drinking straw, and secured it with Scotch tape. The bird needed a lot of sleep to recover.

  Bartholomew can’t endure these expeditions for much longer. Still, something in his genetic makeup compels him to keep flapping. He’s likely dizzy, and could go for sugar water and seed. Though he is losing his bearings, he still senses, via the world’s magnetic humming, that “home,” with its familiar light and smells, and sounds of scratchy jazz records, is still far away, likely, this time, beyond reach.

  Chapter 9

  Pilgrims and the Mountain of Light

  A Link Between Myth and Human History

  SURELY, IF THERE EXISTS THE MAGIC OF THE PIGEONS, AND THE almost mythological quality of Bartholomew’s resolve, there exists also evidence of Krishna’s immodest diamond—the famed Koh-i-Noor, the Mountain of Light—smuggled into our human world by one of the Hindu god’s servants. It was given its temporal name in 1738 by Nadir Shah, born Nadir Kuli, and nicknamed “Slave to the Wonderful.” Nadir was an eighteen-year-old shepherd when he and his mother were abducted by raiding Uzbegs and sold into slavery. His mother was worked to death within four years, after which Nadir escaped into the desert, and eventually talked his way into the service of a local governor. With his quick wit and survivalist instincts born of bondage, Nadir dethroned the ruler of Persia in 1732 and subsequently defeated the Afghans and Turks, kept the Russians out of the Caspian provinces, and cast his attention toward the declining Mughal Empire, the ruler of which, Mohammed Shah, was an oversexed drunk famed for his fatty bacchanals which often ended badly—with someone dead, injured, or in tears.

  In 1738, after defeating Mohammed’s army in less than two hours at the battle of Karnal, Nadir was invited to the conquered shah’s palace for a final orgy. Mohammed had to give up his treasures to Nadir, including the famed, soon-to-be-named Koh-i-Noor, which he did not give up willingly. At the orgy’s intermezzo, post-coital, one of Mohammed’s harem whispered into Nadir’s ear that the defeated shah had hidden the diamond in the folds of his turban. At the feast that followed, while gorging on pigeon breasts in rose petal sauce, and pigeon legs poached in their own fat and topped with pistachios and pomegranate, Nadir suggested that he and Mohammed exchange turbans in a gesture of mutual respect and lifelong fraternal ties, if not exactly friendship. Mohammed—flustered, overfull, and spent of qi—reluctantly agreed, and spent the remainder of the supper neurotically wiping his mouth with a thick napkin of golden silk.

  When the party ended, Nadir returned to his quarters, and, on his bed’s shantung sheets, unraveled Mohammed’s turban. When the diamond came tumbling out, he was so alarmed by its beauty that he cried out, “Koh-i-Noor!” (“Mountain of Light”), while the city outside the palace walls rioted. Mohammed died soon afterward, of “grief,” locking himself in his apartment and undertaking a vow of silence and hunger strike. In counsel with the Koh-i-Noor, Nadir began ordering the slaughter of all those who opposed him, building towers from their skulls. His guards feared that he would soon execute even them, and so they attacked Nadir in his sleep, stabbing him through the heart with their swords. Empowered by his beloved Mountain of Light, Nadir was able to disembowel two of his assassins before succumbing himself. That loose-lipped member of the harem lived a long and supple life, without fully recovering from her youthful exhaustions.

  The diamond, according to legend, was worth the equivalent of all the world’s wealth amassed in seven days’ time, and would bless its possessor with the ability to rule the world, but bear also the curse of non-monetary misfortune. The Koh-i-Noor first slipped into our world from the realm of the gods in the late fifteenth century, and soon thereafter fell into the earthly hands of Babur, the first Mughal ruler of India, and a descendant of Genghis Khan on his mother’s side. A vicious warrior and twitchy poet, Babur, in 1526, was solicited by Daulat Khan, the ruler of Punjab, to help him defeat his despotic nephew, Ibrahim Lodi, the murderous Sultan of Delhi. Babur hypnotized Lodi’s squad of 150 war elephants with his battlefield verse, compelling one of the beasts to gore Lodi through the heart. Through the perforation in the sultan’s dying body, his soul crept out, along with a flock of doves. The doves flew back to the realm of the gods and perched on Krishna’s shoulders, filling the space vacated by the stolen diamond, which had been sent for safekeeping by Vikramaditya, one of Lodi’s (now slain) right-hand men, to the fort of Agra.

  Babur sent his son, Humayun, to the fort in order to seize the dead sultan’s jewels, but the Koh-i-Noor, after a thorough ransacking, was not found. The servants of the treasury were questioned and tortured by Humayun’s foot-soldiers; their bodies slicked in black honey and covered with bees and ants, who had a lovely insectile conversation among themselves about inheriting the world, which the servants perceived only as a chorus of stings and bites, the anxiety of venom and anaphylaxis. Finally, one servant, whose forearm had been slashed open, pointed in the direction of the late sultan’s palace. As his reward, Humayun commanded his men to close the servant’s wound with a stitching made of the ants’ mandibles. As the ants bit the poor man’s wound closed, the foot-soldiers decapitated the once admirably eusocial insects, until the servant’s arm stopped bleeding, decorated with a jagged bolt of ant heads. As he wept, and recovered in shame, the heads shimmied.

  When Humayun arrived at the palace, he found Lodi’s mother sobbing in the courtyard. She moved as if lost in some faraway dream, her arms shaking as she lifted the gold box to Humayun’s sternum, presenting the Koh-i-Noor to its new owner. She said nothing—made no proclamations of love or hate, offered no words of warning, as she fell against Humayun’s chest, weeping. Soon after bringing the diamond to his father as commanded, Humayun fell ill. Babur struck a deal with the Koh-i-Noor, and walked prayerfully around his son’s sickbed with the diamond raised above his head; when he vacated the room, servants and concubines laughed and kissed as they anointed Humayun’s body with oils and petals, and, secretly, made a xylophone of his protruding ribcage. In accordance with the deal, the Koh-i-Noor spared Humayun’s life, and took Babur’s instead.

  Humayun recovered and began his reign, but was defeated in 1540 by Sher Khan’s Afghan forces, and had to flee India and wander in exile. In loneliness—having had to abandon his wives, sons, and daughter—Humayun clung to the diamond, allowed it to become his companion in displacement, his imaginary friend. He spoke to it, and it spoke to him.


  When he arrived, emaciated and bloodied by the terrain, at the threshold of Shah Tahmasp, the ruler of Persia, he was received with such uncommon generosity that the vulnerable Humayun burst into tears and offered the shah the Koh-i-Noor in gratitude. When the astonished shah had the diamond appraised, he was told that it was “above all price,” and could only be measured against the collective expenditures of the remainder of the world, maybe even the universe. As a result, perhaps, of giving up the Koh-i-Noor, Humayun was restored to his throne, but the damage had been done. The diamond had bewitched him, and he longed for it with such intensity that only heavy doses of opium allowed him to bear it. A mere six months after his royal restoration, as he heard the muezzin’s call to prayer, he fell down the long flight of stairs to his library and died, his skull cracked at the temple, his body twisted among the spilled books.

  In subsequent generations, the diamond passed through the hands of the monarchic miscellany—shahs and kings, emperors and tsars—all of whom succumbed to premature deaths as a result of the possession. Even the East India Company fought for it, after the British annexed the Punjab on March 29, 1849. One of the terms of the Treaty of Lahore decreed, “The gem called the Koh-i-Noor which was taken from Shah Shuja-ul-Mulk by Maharajah Ranjit Singh shall be surrendered by the Maharajah of Lahore to the Queen of England.” The East India Company wanted the credit for presenting the gem to the Crown and, according to Lord Dalhousie, the handsome thirty-five-year-old officer responsible for acquiring the Koh-i-Noor for the Crown, “The Court of the East India Company are ruffled by my having caused the Maharajah to cede to the Queen the Koh-i-noor . . . I was fully prepared to hear that the Court chafed at my not sending the diamond to them . . . They ought not do so . . . It was more for the honor of the Queen that the Koh-i-Noor should be surrendered directly from the hand of the conquered prince into the hands of the sovereign who was his conqueror.” When Queen Victoria subsequently endured a beating at the hands of a confused officer, Dalhousie was unsurprised. “The several sad or foul events in England,” he wrote, “lie at my door, as I have sent the Koh-i-Noor which always brings misfortune to its possessor.”

  In ensuing years, various nations—India, Pakistan, Russia, Turkey, Afghanistan, Iran—have claimed ownership of the diamond and have demanded its return. The British responded that they alone have clear title, given the confused history of the diamond, based on the claim that they did not “seize” the gem but had it “presented to them,” as if the maharajah had had a choice in the matter. Even Lord Ballatrae, the great-grandson of Lord Dalhousie, devised a pathetic treatise in which he named himself as the diamond’s rightful owner. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India, was more diplomatic when he said, “Diamonds are for the Emperors and India does not need Emperors.”

  The Koh-i-Noor that resides today in the center of the Maltese Cross of the crown that was made for Queen Elizabeth, consort of George VI, in 1937 is believed to be a fake (the original having been smuggled out of the U.K. during one of the routine maintenance-and-cleaning-of-the-crown productions). Historians speculate that the real gem lies either in the bowels of the Kremlin or among the subterranean labyrinths that house the Iranian crown jewels, but these claims remain unsubstantiated. More substantial: today, Babur’s revered corpse rests in a shady corner of the Bagh-e Babur Gardens in Kabul among groves of walnut, cherry, quince, and apricot trees, a garden that has been alternately decimated and rebuilt over the years of foreign occupation, unrest, civil war, devastation carried out by the Taliban, and the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Mines and other unexploded ordnance lurk in the garden’s mud walls, within which sit contemporary Afghans longing for a peaceful haven from war, some kind of imagined, euphoric future among plants and ancestors, however brief.

  Pilgrims to Babur’s tomb believe the many pigeons that flock the courtyard to be the spirits of good-hearted humans; the pilgrims wait patiently among these birds on the adjacent bench, the muted sounds of bombs detonating in the distance, for Babur’s spirit to emerge and address their traditional questions. “If you want a simple life,” Babur will answer, “I can turn you back into a pigeon and you can lead the uncomplicated life of a bird.” The pilgrims will respond, as they have for centuries, “I want a solution to my predicament as a human and not as a pigeon,” and Babur—ever inscrutable—will disappear, as he always does, into the fog.

  Chapter 10

  Odyssey to Die Houthoop

  “YOU’VE GOT TO STOP BEING ALONE WITH MEN LIKE THAT,” LOUISA says of MacDonald. We hold hands and stare beyond the motel parking lot, watch the desert come together with the sea. Out there are bones and wings, the outlines of flamingos, green and white beaded shells, emptied by the sea of the soft bodies of the urchins. We see worthless rocks, and diamond hoses. Resisting the wind, these things whistle and gurgle and ring, but not like bells.

  Louisa and I look up and into—toward the airborne and the impacted—so as not to look back. The sky hangs over us like a shroud. This, we tell ourselves, is trying again. We go inside. We close the door. We eat a supper of ketchup sandwiches. We shower with brittle blue soap.

  The next morning, I wake with swollen eyes, sad but ready. Louisa and I drive to the Kleinzee Cafè to buy a few supplies before trying to find this Die Houthoop guesthouse. I’ve asked a few locals how to get there, and the directions I’ve received conflict. Some believe the place is no longer in existence. Some believe it never existed—that it’s a mirage, a pipe dream, a way-station for fugitive spirits who wish to hide out from both the land of the living and the land of the dead. “I’m afraid,” Louisa tells me, and so am I, but I keep quiet.

  At the Cafè, the cashier and the customer with whom she was conversing give us astonished stares. Anyone not from Kleinzee incurs such wariness. I wonder if the town’s narrative, as written and self-published and poorly bound with black plastic coiling, and poorly copied on a machine with low toner by De Beers, still stands. I wonder if they still feel themselves part of a “very special, but isolated community.” If they still feel “that they were never treated as mere numbers.”

  The Cafè is a hoarder’s version of a convenience store (not really a cafè at all, though one can order a cup of coffee here), hospice for the unwanted and forgotten goods of the past decade or so, the cardboard boxes stacked, still filmed in cellophane, floor to ceiling, forming a labyrinth through which the customer must snake, beneath the dim flicker of the one working fluorescent, in order to make it to the actual shelves, and the unwrapped jars and cans, themselves garnished with a veneer of dust so thick that I can (and do, on a museum-worthy tin of Koo Chakalaka) draw my initials into it. Apparently, I was here, surrounded by imperishables.

  The two women watch us, and whisper. Because there are no carts or baskets, we fill our hands, and when we approach the counter, the two women straighten.

  Of course, they know who we are. When the desert blows itself through the open doorway, the dust sparkles and whirls about their heads. I am dizzy. The women appear to be dancing with the cashier’s counter between them, as if bound, forever sepia and strobe-lit, to some epileptic phenakistoscope. They volunteer the information that they used to work at the mine, but were retrenched by MacDonald (“but we don’t blame him”). The customer, who is here more for conversation than to shop—clad in purple blouse, purple pants, and purple pillbox hat—tells us that her last name is Carstens. “As in Jack Carstens,” she brags.

  The Carstens family name is still often invoked in contemporary Kleinzee. On August 15, 1925, freed from the anchor of the First World War and his remote military station in British India (where he served as an officer in Queen Alexandra’s Gurkha Rifles under T. E. Lawrence, a.k.a. Lawrence of Arabia), Jack Carstens returned to the Kleinzee area, and began to dig into Namaqualand in earnest. “It was Jack Carstens,” the customer tells us, “who discovered the first diamond” in the sand of what was to become known as the Diamond Coast.

  Carstens, during his serv
ice, had had it with Lawrence’s self-obsession and slandered the man’s affectation of dressing like a Bedouin and his birth as a bastard. By the time Carstens met him, Lawrence, exhausted with his own fame, had become withdrawn, given to speaking to his men of his dreams as if they were true.

  Itinerant and out of sorts himself, Carstens found solace in and communion with Lawrence’s habit of muttering tenderly to his beloved pet carrier pigeons, which had served him so well during his glory days in the Arab Revolt. Carstens would eavesdrop as Lawrence whispered to the birds of the heroics of their antecedents, which had been trained in coops in Palestine, telling them about the honeyed messages their progenitors had carried between Damascus and Cairo (to and from the British government officials stationed there).

  Lawrence laughed as he spoke of swimming in the Mediterranean, facing on shore the warehouses full of cotton, rice, and cigarettes, and the water tank on which he saw alight one of his carriers, exhausted from its long flight, the bird grooming itself and recuperating, until Lawrence fetched a stone from the seabed and threw it at the pigeon, in order to startle it back into flight. Lawrence became wistful as he spoke of waste and karma, how the Turks had seized the wheat from Jewish farms and how, in ignorance, they had stored it in uncovered troughs, and so, when it rained, the upper level germinated and provided a feast for the journeying pigeons, who ate most of the lot, thriving while both the confiscators and confiscatees starved. And Lawrence sighed as he spoke of the necessity of killing some of his best pigeons during raids, lest they be captured and used by enemies in Ottoman Turkey; how they buried the carcasses in cotton fields and plowed over their graves.