A Diamond in the Rough

by Marilyn Land

“Harry, Adam, and I will be available to answer any questions you may have, and I will be signing copies of my book that are available for purchase in the lobby—all proceeds of which will go to the Hadassah Hospital for research in memory of my mother—Alexandra Portman Lyons.”

  The excitement of the guests was infectious; no one seemed to want the evening to be over. The line entering the Exhibit was endless. Harry and Adam were besieged with questions as Zoe signed copy after copy of her book until she had signed the very last one.

  As the woman who had purchased the last copy walked away, Zoe looked up to see a tall, distinguished black gentleman standing before her. “I’m so sorry, there are no copies left, but if you leave me your information, I will be happy to send you one.”

  He did not speak at first, but handed her a card that read, Afram Botu Schiller, Professor Emeritus, Howard University, Washington, D.C. “I was fortunate to receive an advance copy through my friends here at the University where I have been privileged to lecture throughout the years.

  “Would you be kind enough to sign my copy to Jamilia?”

  At the Westwood Nursing Home in upstate New York, the party they had assembled for his 95th Birthday was at long last over. To him, age was a number not a milestone; all it meant was that he had endured another year of mundane existence awaiting the end of his journey.

  He had no family, no friends; no one came to visit him. He could find no cause for celebration with people who were incapacitated or mentally unstable that neither knew him nor he them.

  He had been transferred to the State run facility upon his discharge from the hospital, after suffering a stroke while serving a life sentence at Attica for killing a guard during his fourth and final jewelry store robbery. He had simply traded a cell for a room.

  Promising to return after she helped others to their rooms, the aide left him alone watching the big screen TV tuned into the evening news. As the anchor’s voice blared to the empty room, a carved chest appeared on the screen causing him to move his wheelchair closer to the set to get a better look.

  In Tel Aviv today, the family of Sir Jacob Lyons, the British billionaire philanthropist who passed away in 2015 bequeathed this intricately carved chest containing a cache of 100,000 carats of diamonds to the State of Israel. The Exhibit will . . …

  The chest looked vaguely familiar. Again, he inched closer to the set until his wheelchair stopped. He closed and opened his eyes several times in total disbelief. It was the same chest; the very same chest that he had seen in his Uncle Franz’s apartment. The realization that the diamonds had been there for his taking all along hit him like a ton of bricks.

  The pain that spread across his chest was excruciating. As he gasped for breath, there was no one there to hear him or help him.

  When the aide returned to take Rudy Schiller back to his room, she found him dead on the floor of a massive heart attack—the distortion of his facial features causing a look of horror on his face.

  EPILOGUE

  TEL AVIV, ISRAEL 2016

  He invited Zoe, Harry, and Adam to be his guests for dinner the following evening. He was scheduled to fly back to Washington, DC in a couple of days, but offered to delay his return if another time would be more convenient. Zoe asked if David and her sisters-in-law could be included; he readily agreed. He made all of the arrangements.

  For some reason she could not understand, Zoe had been drawn to Professor Afram Botu Schiller from the moment she looked up and saw him standing before her. When he extended an invitation to dinner, she accepted without hesitation on behalf of the others and without consulting them.

  Messa’s gourmet cuisine encapsulates Middle Eastern flavors and ingredients with Provencal cooking techniques served in a majestic white marble dining room featuring long walnut wooden tables adorned with festive wine glasses and candles.

  Since its opening in 2004, it had become a favorite of Afram’s reminding him of some of his mother’s South African dishes; it was the first place that came to mind for this special occasion. He did, however, choose a more intimate and quieter seating option around the dining room’s perimeter.

  When his guests arrived, wine and hors d’oeuvres awaited them. He pre-ordered dinner but asked that it be held until he requested it be served. Thanking them for accepting an invitation from a total stranger broke the ice. He introduced himself and went around the table acknowledging each of them. Stopping at Zoe, he praised her novel adding that his children had often hinted that he do the same.

  He began in South Africa when his father was killed trying to break up a fight; he was five years old. His black African mother left alone with a small boy, no means of support, and far from her native village was sitting on the side of the road cradling him in her arms as they carried his father’s body away. That was where Franz Schiller found her.

  They lived in a small shack down near the docks that his father bought when they first arrived in Cape Town. Franz set her up with a booth in the open market and for years she sold various items, many that he gave her from The General Store; they managed. His mother taught him to read, and when he wasn’t seen with a book in his hand, he was carving pieces of wood and magically turning them into majestic animals and boxes as his father had taught him. Soon his mother’s booth carried new items.

  When Jewish immigrants from all over Europe began arriving in Cape Town, his mother was recruited to teach English to the children at the synagogue.

  As he grew older, he did odd jobs and when Franz converted his store to The Smoker’s Shop, he helped build the cases, paint, and supplied him with carved cigar boxes and humidors to sell.

  His story told of the friendship between Franz, Ben, and Sidney adding his mother and him to the mix, confirming most of what they had pieced together in their search for the rightful owner of the cache. He recalled the brothers’ trip to London and the party they threw welcoming them back to consoling them upon learning their brother Harry and his family had been killed in an air raid. They were there for one another throughout good times and bad.

  His mother often referred to Sidney’s death as the beginning of a downward spiral from which the three friends never recovered. Franz’s death a year later was another terrible blow, but determined to fulfill his friend’s final wishes, Ben summoned them to his cottage where he read the Will revealing that he and his mother were Franz’s sole heirs. All funds resided in one account on deposit at the First National Bank of South Africa; The Smoker’s Shop emptied of its contents was put up for sale, the proceeds of which would be deposited into their account.

  The Bank acting as Executor of the Will was charged with carrying out its provisions and for a period of two years dispensed the funds on a monthly basis. There was an additional amount set aside for his education arranged by Franz before he died.

  He and his mother were overwhelmed; they had not only inherited a princely sum that assured their wellbeing far into the future if not for a lifetime, but most importantly assured his education. While still digesting their newfound status, Ben told them about the Franz Schiller they did not know.

  He began in 1882, the year Franz arrived in Cape Town—from Simon Abel’s General Store to the farmhouse to finding the diamonds—the diamonds he felt he had stolen because he did not own the land on which he found them. He led them before the carved chest that once sat in Franz’s apartment, lifting the lid, and revealing its contents—tray after tray of cut and polished diamonds.

  Ben related how Franz had summoned him and Sidney to his home one evening, telling them where and how he had found and collected the diamonds over a period of twenty years. Seeking their advice and help, he opened an account at the Annex to have the rough stones cut and polished. Ben believed that although the diamonds had not been specifically mentioned in the Will, they were part of his estate and rightfully belonged to his heirs.

  His mother would not hear of it. She que
stioned; what could a black African woman with a teenage son possibly do with them? They presented a liability she was unwilling to accept. Ben agreed. For the time being, the chest would remain on the table in his cottage; the chest he himself had carved and the table he had built to Franz’s specifications.

  Ben picked up where Franz left off on behalf of furthering his education. He approached a congregant at the synagogue who was a Professor at Cape Town University, and it was through his efforts and tutelage that he attended the South African Native College, earning degrees in Political Science and Economics. It was at this point in his life that he decided to honor Franz for all that he had done for him and his mother by assuming Schiller as his surname.

  He was preparing to leave for college when Ben suddenly died—the very day he was due to return to the cottage that his mother had readied for his homecoming. During the many months he spent at the Sanatorium recovering from Tuberculosis, Ben wrote his own Will leaving everything to his nephew Jacob Lyons.

  Further provisions instructed that he be cremated and that both his and Sidney’s remains be shipped to London to be buried alongside their brother. The Bank held the Deed to his cottage; however, the Will stated his mother could live there as long as she wished.

  He sealed his Will in an envelope and entrusted it to his closest friend, his mother. When Ben died, she opened the envelope, made note of his wishes, and presented it to the Bank to contact his nephew, his heir.

  As he and his mother gathered the items from the cottage in an effort to determine how large a crate he would need to build, they came upon the chest of diamonds. His mother agonized for days knowing that the decision she was about to make had to be the right one; in the end, there was no decision to be made because the only person who came to mind was Jacob Lyons.

  He carved a matching box to hold Ben’s remains; they packed up the tools, and personal effects; and placing the chest in the crate, delivered it to the funeral home, nailed shut and ready for shipment.

  He had already left for college when Jacob arrived in Cape Town. Apprehensive at first, his mother’s fears soon dissipated when she met the young man whom she had chosen to entrust with the cache. They met over a period of days; the diamonds were never mentioned. He seemed more interested in learning about the uncles he never knew.

  When it came time for him to return to London, he thanked her for taking the time to provide him the insight he sought. To his mother, Jacob’s visit was a gift confirming that her choice had been the right one.

  Upon graduating from the South African Native College, and having been accepted to Howard University in Washington, DC, he left with a heavy heart for the States, leaving his mother behind in Cape Town. Offered a professorship at the University upon receiving his doctorate, he convinced his mother to leave South Africa and move with him to America. She notified the Bank to sell the cottage, and arranged to have the proceeds go to the Great Synagogue in return for three plaques on the Memorial Wall for Franz, Ben, and Sidney. She never looked back.

  She told him many years later that it was not a hard decision to make. South Africa in the grips of Apartheid had nothing to offer black Africans, but more of the same she had experienced her entire life. She was not yet fifty and looked forward to a whole new world of experiences. She had a good life in America. She lived to see her only son marry, was a loving grandmother to six, and a loving great grandmother to eight; she died at the age of 100.

  Through the years, they never stopped searching for news about Jacob Lyons or the diamonds. With the advent of the Internet, it became easier, and although they found an abundance of information about Jacob, no word of the diamonds ever surfaced.

  On his last visit to Israel, he learned of the pending publication of Zoe’s book and by invitation only dinner. Intrigued by the name of Zoe’s novel, he convinced his good friend, Professor Levi Morris, to give him his advance copy along with his ticket to the Banquet.

  He viewed Jacob’s decision to bequeath the diamonds to the State of Israel as the perfect choice, the only choice because it connected everyone associated with them including Simon Abel on whose family’s property they were found. The fact that Jacob made his decision without knowing the entire story, led him to believe that divine intervention had played a part.

  How grand it would have been if Jacob and Jamilia had learned the outcome of their decisions; deep down, he believed they knew.

  The hors d’oeuvres sat untouched; the wine bottles stood empty. He asked that dinner be served. After dinner they retired to the adjacent room, the all-black bar that stood in stark contrast to the majestic all-white marble dining room, extending their evening into the early hours of the morning.

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  Each of us is born a diamond in the rough with the potential of becoming that perfect cut and polished stone. To that extent, the responsibility of the process rests entirely within each of us.

  The actual process consists of five steps—

  planning, cleaving, bruting, polishing, and inspecting.

  Without question— planning—although time consuming, is the most important step as it determines the final value of the finished product.

  The steps of cleaving and bruting encompass our years of youth through adulthood where nurturing our imagination enables our ingenuity to fuel our passion and establish our enterprise—as facet after facet we cut.

  At mature adulthood we are ready for the polishing—

  of our goals, our achievements, our benevolence.

  Hate and malice purged from our hearts, we infuse the Scaif with a mixture of love and goodness making it possible to polish our facets symmetrically at angles that reflect us in the best light.

  The ultimate step—inspecting—appraises the value of our finished product—that perfect cut and polished stone—for therein lies our Legacy.

  Marilyn Land

  DIAMONDS

  Diamonds are more than aesthetically beautiful—they are enduring symbols of love, romance, and commitment. The stone’s name is derived from the Greek word adamas meaning unconquerable and indestructible whose symbolic meaning lends itself aptly to its historic commemoration of eternal love.

  Throughout history, diamonds have stood for wealth, power, and spirit, and worn by Royalty as symbols of strength, courage, and invincibility. Over the centuries, diamonds acquired a more unique status as the ultimate gift of love. It was said that cupid’s arrows were tipped with diamonds that had a magic nothing else could equal. The Greeks believed the fire in the diamond reflected the constant flame of love.

  The story of diamonds transcends cultures and localities. It is the oldest item that anyone can own; it is three billion years in age, a strategic and high tech super material that is formed in the earth’s interior and shot to the surface by extraordinary volcanoes. It is carbon in its more concentrated form, the chemical element fundamental to all life; thus it is a native element. It is also extremely pure, containing only trace amounts of boron and nitrogen.

  Diamonds are the hardest substance on earth, but their appeal goes far beyond durability. Adding to the mystery and aura of what makes diamonds so sought after, approximately 250 tons of ore must be mined and processed in order to produce a single, one-carat, polished, gem-quality stone.

  Lodewyk van Bercken, a Flemish diamond polisher, invented the Scaif in the mid 15th century; this single invention transformed the diamond trade and is still in use today. His ingenious polishing wheel enabled him to quickly cut facets into diamonds with precision, and opened the door to the creation of complex diamond cuts which otherwise would have never been possible. He introduced the concept of absolute symmetry in the placement of facets on the stone. His meticulous and precisely studied advancements resulted in the first pear-shaped cut diamond.

  Two years after the invention of the Scaif, when Archduke Maxmilian of Austria gave a diamond ring to Mary of Bu
rgundy, the diamond engagement ring was introduced. Placing it upon the third finger of the left hand dates back to the early Egyptian belief that the vein of love runs directly from the heart to the tip of the third finger.

  For millions of people around the world, a DIAMOND’s worth lies in the reason it was given and by whom it was given as the mystery and magic, the beauty and romance shining out from a simple solitaire says all the heart feels but words cannot express.

  DIAMOND—just the mention of the name exemplifies wealth, prosperity, status, and exudes everlasting love.

  The legacy of the DIAMOND will continue. It existed at the dawn of civilized man and will exist forever. It will be a part of love and prosperity, a part of intrigue and beauty, a part of weddings and celebrations, and a part of every woman’s heart that keeps one on her finger. Men will always swear love by it, and love will always maintain the brilliance of earth’s great gift—the DIAMOND.

  THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITES

  My happiness is to love you and be loved by you in return.

  Jack Stewart Land

  Diamonds are Forever!

  Frances Gerety

  There are in the end three things that last: Faith, Hope, and Love

  and the greatest of these is Love.

  The engine is the heart of an aeroplane

  but the pilot is its soul.

  Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

  Official Historian of the RAF

  Aeronautics was neither an industry nor a science.

  It was a miracle.

  Igor Sikorsky

  Somewhere over the rainbow way up high,

  There’s a land that I heard of once in a lullaby,

  Somewhere over the rainbow skies are blue,

  And the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.

  Lyrics from Somewhere Over the Rainbow