Diamond Boy

“Who were those poor people?” I asked.

“Those boys wanted to be men. It is the way here. When you have worked the mines, you are no longer a boy. If you make it into the eye, you are seen as a man.”

“And they did not make it?” my father asked.

“No, their luck ran out. They were found camping in the valley near the diamond fields, waiting for a chance to fill their sacks with soil. It was as close as they could get to the fields.”

“Think what a stone like this could mean to your family, Patson?”

I didn’t understand why he was asking me that question. He seemed to be testing me but all I could see was the sparkling white light of the stone, which he twirled lovingly between his thumb and index finger.

“This stone you cannot hold. You have to find your own, Patson, and it will define your future.”

I was vaguely aware of my father clearing his throat. He called my name, softly, as if he was reminding me of something. I ignored him, even though I knew it was wrong to do so. Had I been an obedient son, I would have listened to him.

What is wrong with having plenty of money? Money makes things happen; money makes you feel good about yourself. It can buy you knowledge and respect; it can inspire you to do good things for others. When I leave the mines, I’m going to be rich and I will show my father that I can be a man.

I remembered those ghostly columns of miners rising out of the ground on the night we arrived in the fields: the zombielike creatures sifting through sand by candlelight. And to think I’d been so afraid of them that night, but now, in the harsh light of day, they were nothing more than poor, desperate people.

I will never forget u >!< Working the mines. [Diamonds] for everyone! It’s ama-Zing here. [ :) ] Found lots of small [diamonds]! Easy. [ :) ] Life is good. [ :) ]

Kamba’s words made me realize that finding a girazi was one thing but getting someone to give you money for it, without stealing it from you, was another thing altogether. My girazi was still just a stone as long as I was unable to find someone to pay me money for it. Finding a diamond was hard enough, but selling it was harder, and more dangerous too.

“It’s like we’re living two lives—the one in the fields, which is all about hard work, and the one in our imagination which is all about the good life we think we’re going to have. When you come to the fields, you enter the girazi zone and become a zombie digger under the spell of girazi.”

“Joseph, your children are a credit to you,” he said to my father. “They are a finer treasure than any stone you will find in the diamond field.”

“You’re right, Boubacar. That’s a good thing to remember.”

At that moment I wanted to tell my father everything, about the gwejana and the ngodas, even about my girazi. But looking at him as he stared at his hands, shaking his head, I didn’t have the heart. I had hoped that my success with the gwejana would cheer him up, but all I saw was despair in his eyes. It was enough that we now had food for the month and that I had brought them gifts.

I had never challenged my father so directly. He studied me silently and then laid his hand on my shoulder. “You remember what happened to the man who found the first diamonds in Marange?”

“Yes, he drove into a tree and killed himself.”

“He lost control of his life, Patson.”

“But that’s not going to happen to me,” I insisted.

“I hope not, son, I hope not.”

And that was the end of our conversation. I had thought my discovery would have pleased my father. However, he seemed unaffected by my news, which left me feeling deflated. I had wanted to hear his praises, not his anxiety. I wanted him to be excited, but instead, we arrived at the door of our shed in silence, my father deep in thought.

I turned away so Arves would not see my tears. My girazis meant nothing to me now without my father. Searching the soil for stones had been for him, to prove that I could do a man’s work, and help look after our family. My diamonds had meant my father could be a teacher again, and fulfill his dream of seeing Grace and me back in school. Now there was no purpose to any of it and I no longer had anyone to prove anything to.

Besides, they would never see me, and yet they would stare themselves blind looking at Stumpy. He had taken over both my life and my body. Stumpy was now the star of the show, dangling uselessly in the air, no longer connected to the earth. Nobody saw Patson Moyo anymore; they only saw the half limb, flopping about in a space of its own, ignoring its owner as if he never existed. [...] Only then would they raise their eyes to look at the person who owned this calamity, but by then it would be too late. The book had been judged by its cover, and the cover shouted “Stumpy” to the world. I would never be chosen again. I was disabled and no good for anything; a useless boy, worthy only of their sympathy.

I had lost myself in the rhythm of this beautiful game, shouting encouragement to my new friends, and reveling at how, in this moment at least, I was their equal. I was a normal boy, playing with other normal boys, not worrying about tomorrow or what the days after tomorrow would bring.

“Once you have come through the eye you are a man. Stop behaving like a boy, Patson. No diamond is a true diamond until it has been cut and polished. The same is true for a man. Not one of us becomes a man without the pain of being tested, or without the polish of suffering. So you’ve lost something. So you’ve suffered. So have we all.

“You want to be a Stumpy all your life? Don’t look so shocked. I will call you Stumpy but that’s not who you are, Patson. That is Stumpy,” he said, pointing at my half leg. “You are a man now, but if you are going to make the rest of this journey with me, you’d better start believing it. You owe it to your friend to climb that hill.”

I drove into a tree, Baba. You were right. I lost control of my life, just like that man who found the first diamonds in Marange. [...] Forgive me, Baba, forgive me.

Now is the time for you to be strong, son.

“Come on Patson. I’ll help you.” Innocent’s gentle voice reached through the pain and haze of my confusion.

I felt hands lifting me onto Boubacar’s back and the rhythm of his running return. Deo and Innocent ran on either side of Boubacar, helping him, holding me on his back. I wept at their kindness, at the strength of Boubacar’s will to keep on running, and the voice of my father urging me on.

Be strong, son.

“Leave me, Daddy, leave me,” I whispered.

Boubacar ran on, gripping me more tightly.

I had made it across the Limpopo River and was in another country, but the South African sky looked no different from the one in Zimbabwe. For the first time in a long time, I remembered how blue the sky could actually be.

“All you need is within you, Patson,” the old woman had said, and now I understood. She was telling me, even as she was putting those stones inside me, that I would have to rely on something far deeper than anything diamonds could provide.

And even as I was wishing he would take them away, I felt the desire to hold them building up inside me again. In that very same instant, I hated them and prized them. I wanted nothing to do with them, but at the same time, I wanted everything they could do for me. I realized I had to make decisions about them, good decisions that would benefit other people and not just myself. Then I understood that owning these stones was a responsibility, and one that I was not yet strong enough to deal with.

“Please, Doctor, take them away.”

“That part of our life is over, Grace. We will not be going back to the sheds,” I said. “You will never be alone like that again.”

She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tightly. I could feel her body tremble against mine, and when she pulled away she was crying. “You sounded just like Baba then, Patson. All serious and kind.”

And so I have told you everything now, Baba, and the story I’ve told is who I am today. But when I finally came to this page—the very last page of the diary you gave me back in the tobacco shed—I found a message, words scribbled in the bottom right-hand corner, waiting for me to find them. It seems only right that they be the final words of my story:

Yah, Half Prince, I know you are going to make it. Even though it looks bad now, you’re going to be all right. Did I ever lie to you? No, so believe, Patson! And it will be good again, because the Geez are in the Knees. That’s all I’m saying and somebody as “bright” as you should know what I’m talking about. You’re my best friend, Patson, always will be, till the day I die. ARVES!