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National Geographic : 2002 Mar
Contents
The diamond was enormous-just over 102 carats, the size of an egg and the largest flawless oval-cut diamond in history. "It's sweet material, soft on the wheel," purred William Goldberg, Bernstein's boss and a renowned dealer in the New York diamond business. "Sometimes a stone will cry as you put it on the scaife," said Goldberg, uttering a plaintive, screeching noise in illustration. "But not this one. God," he declared to the room at large, "is on our side." Goldberg had bought the diamond over the phone from Tel Aviv. When it arrived, he had taken it out on his terrace so he could be pho tographed holding it. Diamonds can shatter if struck in the wrong place, so one man had lain full length on the flagstones beneath Gold berg's outstretched hands, a human cushion in case Goldberg dropped the rough stone. Eloquent on the subject of its sublime qual ities, Goldberg was now mulling possible names for the oval diamond Bernstein was pol ishing, one of four gems ultimately cut from the rough stone that had arrived from Tel Aviv. "Maybe the Beluga," he mused, "because it's the best of the best." He had no idea where the stone had originated before it surfaced on the Israeli diamond market. I asked him what the uncut diamond had weighed when he bought it, and he replied, "265.82 carats." The penny dropped. I had found an old friend. Eight months before, in the late spring of 2000, a group of diamond miners had been hard at work in a wide, sandy pit south of the city of Mbuji-Mayi, the heart of diamond country in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The pit was honeycombed with square shafts hardly wider than a grave and as deep as 20 feet. The dirt was hauled in buckets on ropes to the surface, washed, sieved, and picked over. It was backbreaking and dangerous labor, and sometimes weeks or months went by without any reward. Most of the stones the diggers found were small-less than a carat. The few dollars they brought had to be divided up among the numerous interests involved in the dig, including the owner of the land, the financier who supplied the food, the guards, and the creuseurs, as diggers are called in Congo. Then at the end of May one of the creuseurs reached into the dirt and pulled out a stone weighing an unbelievable 265.82 carats. Their troubles were over-at least for a while. The creuseurs who had found what soon became known as the "big stone" were deter mined to drive a hard bargain. After intense negotiations, they made a deal with a stocky, 37-year-old dealer named Alphonse Ngoyi Kasanji, a powerful force in the local diamond business. Rumor put the price at three million dollars, although Kasanji would never confirm The World of Diamonds Earth's diamond mines produce some 800 million stones-both gem quality and industrial-a year. Eighty per cent of the diamonds destined for jewelry pass through Antwerp before they reach the cutting wheel. Laborers in India cut and polish nine out of ten gems; the majority will eventually reach stores in the United States. SCANADA / UNITED ), STATES *New York S 48% V' * i. RUSSIA London, Antwerp, U.K. BELGIUM 80% SIERRA LEONE * ., yiJAPAN 19%mw S, Gujarat TelAviv, State ISRAEL 90% NDA Mumbai ,0THAILAND \(Bt mbay) DEM. REP , S OF HrIne CONGO * ANGOLA BOTSWANA: SOUTH AFRICA MINING * Major diamond deposit Major mining country * Conflict diamond area TRADE - Major diamond trade center CUTTING SMajor diamond cutting center RETAIL . Major diamond market NG MAPS 19°/
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