ZORAYDAH'S TALE OR:
THE TREE OF DIAMONDS
by Manny Panta
In the great bazaar of Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi, during the reign of Shah Jahan, the same who built that shrine to immortal love, Taj Mahal, there dwelt a seller of
gold, silver, diamonds and other precious stones. He was prosperous, his
business was thriving, and, spoiled by his success, he had become quite greedy
and cynical. He bought his jewels and precious metals directly from mines and
impoverished widows for a pittance and sold them for huge profits to the public.
He built for himself a sumptuous haveli near
the Red Fort. Its walls and columns of its courtyard were adorned by colorful
tiles and paintings of scenes from the Mahabharata. There was continuous
feasting at his house. When the Shah paraded in his richly caparisoned horses
and elephants through Chandni Chowk, he and his family stood in front of their
shop dressed in their finest clothes and jewelry to pay homage to the ruler. Life
for the dealer was good.
One day, a man in ragged clothes came into his shop. The
seller looked at him crossly, thinking he was a beggar and shooed him away.
“Please sir,” said the man in the ragged clothes. “I have
something to show you.”
Overcoming his disgust, the dealer relented.
“What do you have to show me?” he asked brusquely.
“This,” said the man. He took out a dirty piece of cloth and
undid the knot that secured it. The dealer’s eyes nearly flew out of their sockets
when he saw what the man showed him. Staring back at him was one of the largest
raw diamonds he had seen in his life. True, it looked like dried milk sap the
size of a pear, but to his jeweler’s eye he could see that it had the
attributes of a diamond.
His hand trembling with excitement, he snatched the stone,
examined it with his jeweler’s loupe and sighed. It was real. He estimated that
it easily weighed one hundred carats polished. If he had it cut into several
smaller diamonds, his profits would be even more massive. As far as he could
tell, the diamond had no inclusions. If it turned out to be flawless, it would
be worth a rajah’s ransom.
“Well?” he asked. “I can see that you want to sell this to
me. How much do you want for it?”
“Ah, sir,” said the man, “I do not quite know.”
“It is diamond, that I must tell you,” the dealer said.
“However, it is low-grade. I will give you ten thousand rupees for it.”
“Sir,” said the man, “I am sure it is worth more than that.”
“All right then,” replied the dealer, “twenty thousand and
not a rupee more.”
The man thought for a while.
“You need the money, my friend,” encouraged the dealer,
trying to distract the man from thinking too much. “You cannot eat diamonds for
lunch.”
“I accept your offer sir because I must leave tonight,” said
the man. The dealer gave him twenty thousand rupees, and the man left.
The dealer had his most skilled craftsman polish the
diamond. He sold it for one million rupees to the Shah in Agra. The Shah, dazzled by the size and brilliance
of the diamond, caused it to be placed as a centerpiece in his processional
turban where it provoked great admiration and envy among all those who saw it.
Wealthier than ever, the dealer wondered whether he was
going to see the man who sold him the diamond ever again. He needed not have wondered. One year to the
day of the sale of the diamond, the same man went into the shop of the dealer.
This time he was dressed more smartly.
“Do you recognize me?” the man asked the dealer.
“Yes, of course,” replied the dealer. “Do you have anything
for me?”
“Yes, I do,” said the man. This time he produced a plain
silk purse from which he produced the same kind diamond that he showed a year
before. The dealer was even more mesmerized by this stone. If it turned out to
be as flawless as the previous one that he sold to the Shah, it would make him
even richer than he was now.
“How much do you want for this?” asked the dealer, practically
salivating at the mouth.
“One million rupees,” said the man. The dealer looked up in
surprise at him.
“But that is outrageous!” he protested.
“If you do not want it at this price, sir,” said the man,
who did not look as abject as he did before, “then I shall look for another
buyer here in Chandni Chowk.”
“Wait! Wait!” said the dealer. “Five hundred thousand
rupees. That’s my final offer.”
The man looked at him and demanded: “Eight Hundred Thousand
and that is my final price.”
The dealer hurriedly calculated that he could easily sell
the diamond to a maharajah or even to the Shah himself for double the amount.
“Agreed!” he said, and paid out the rupees, albeit
reluctantly.
Once again the man disappeared. Once again he would appear
every year, bearing the same kind of diamond, striking a bargain with him that grew
even more painful, but which proved to be extremely lucrative. His flawless
diamonds now reached the noble families not only of India but of Europe as
well.
On the fifth year that the man paid him a visit, the dealer
could no longer contain his curiosity.
“Where did you get this diamond, sir?” he asked. “You must
tell me its provenance.”
“Ah, I cannot tell that to you, my friend,” said the man, no
longer addressing him with the honorific sahib.
“If you do not tell me now,” said the dealer, “I shall have
you arrested by the Shah’s men. You won’t be able to refuse the Shah as you now
do me.”
“And what will you say to the Shah?” the man asked.
“I will say that you are a thief,” said the dealer.
The man considered this, sighed and said: “Yes. I might as
well tell you. This diamond and the other ones before it do not come from a
mine. They are the fruit of a tree. The tree grows from solid rock. Its roots
go deep into cracks in the rock and into the ground. Once a year, it blooms and
yields a single fruit. This diamond is that fruit. Believe or don’t believe me
but it is the truth, by Allah.”
“That is impossible,” the dealer exclaimed, incredulous at
this assertion. “Diamonds come from deep beneath the earth!”
“Yet, in this case, it does not,” said the man.
“I must see this tree for myself!” said the dealer.
“Then you must wait a year before it bears fruit again,”
said the man.
“I want to see it now, even if it hasn’t borne fruit yet,”
demanded the dealer.
The man sighed.
“Then prepare yourself for a long journey,” he warned him.
The dealer prepared a caravan, and at the direction of the
seller of the diamond, traced a route inland from Delhi to Udisha, past the
tiger-infested swampland of West Bengal and into a land where even the pebbles
of the streams where rubies. But they pressed on and after many a hardship,
they arrived at a valley with a pleasant river running through it. In this
valley rose a rock of great height. Atop this rock, a solitary tree stood like
a sentinel. It was stout at the base and many-limbed at the crown. The tree was
leafless.
“Is that the tree?” the dealer cried, trembling with
excitement.
“That is it,” replied the man. “We must climb up to the
summit of the rock to be near it.”
Grown fat from too much indulgence in food and drink, the
dealer could not carry his weight up the rock. He called his servants to hack a
staircase from the rock and caused himself to be hauled up on a palanquin.
In time, he finally stood at the base of the giant tree.
“You are in luck,” said the man who led him there. “It has
been a year since the tree had borne fruit. I can see that it has produced a
single flower. If you wait just a little bit longer, that flower will become a
diamond.”
After a week this came to pass. Up on a branch high up the
tree, a milky white substance materialized from where the flower used to be. It
was a raw diamond.
The man climbed up the tree and plucked the fruit from the
branch. He went down and offered the raw gem to the dealer.
“Behold!” cried the man. “The Fruit of the Tree of
Diamonds!"
“How is this possible?” cried the dealer, as he held the
rock in his hand.
“The roots of the tree probe into every nook and cranny of
this rock and, by my reckoning, finds the diamonds from inside the rock,”
offered the man.
“If what you say is true,” said the dealer, “then the tree
itself does not produce the diamonds. The diamonds come from within the rock!”
The man looked doubtfully at him and said, “Perhaps.”
“Why wait for the tree to render a single fruit once a
year?” asked the dealer. “Why not dig for the diamonds now?”
Despite the remonstrations of the man, the dealer had his
men cut down the tree and the rock blasted until nothing remained of it but a
pile of rubble. He was convinced that the rock extended into the ground and a
fortune of diamonds lay within its seams. He returned to Delhi and recruited
more men to excavate the place where the tree used to grow. In time the whole
scenic valley became a wasteland. In time, as he poured money over his venture,
he lost his shop, his customers and his haveli,
so convinced was he that he had found a new Golconda.
In the end, his expense and effort came to nothing. Several
years of excavation rendered not a single diamond. All that he and his workers
found were pebbles and rocks.
On his deathbed, as he lay ill and impoverished in a hut
within the shadow of the cliffs that surrounded the now despoiled valley, the
man who had first sold him the diamond came to visit him.
“Where?” the dealer
cried. “Where are my diamonds?”
The man looked at him sadly and said contemptuously: “The
diamonds were the sap of the tree, didn’t you see? It took nourishment from the
rock from which it grew. It drew the elements that make up a diamond from the
raw matter of the earth. The tree combined these elements in its body and
produced the fruit. You did not believe me. Now the tree and rock are gone, and
so are the diamonds.”
The dealer stared at the man, gave a deep sigh of disappointment
and died.
©Copyright 2016 mannypanta All Rights Reserved
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