When I finally woke up nine hours later, my cousin Jamu was sitting at the foot of my bed. The first thing I noticed was his smirk. I’d seen expressions like his before on other boys, sometimes mean, sometimes superior, but always hiding some insecurity. His face was round, with thick lips and a stubby, flat nose that looked like he’d come up short in a long fistfight. His chubby legs were covered with gray dust and his shins and bare feet were coated with mud. Then I saw the reason for his smirk: He had been reading my diary.

“My father says you’re lucky to be alive.”

The contents of my backpack were strewn about the floor and he was flicking through the pages of my diary like it was a magazine.

“Give me that. You have no right—” I lunged at him.

“You write lots of stuff,” he said, waving the notebook, then tossing it onto the pile of my clothes.

“It’s mine. And it’s private.”

“You didn’t bring much, but your phone is cool,” he said, pulling my phone from his pocket. “Who is this Sheena chick?”

I sprang out of bed and grabbed my phone. Jamu fell backward, slamming his head on the corner of a cupboard. When he took his hand away it was sticky with blood. Like a baby he wailed in pain and ran out of the room calling for his mother. Serves him right, I thought, and angrily stuffed all my things into my backpack.

My father entered the room. “Patson? What’s going on?”

“He was reading my diary and he took my phone.”

“Remember we are guests here, son.”

“But that doesn’t mean he can—”

“Patson, I know you to be better than this. I want you to apologize to Jamu.”

I hurriedly dressed, smarting at my father’s rebuke and the unfairness of it all. I followed him down a corridor and into a lounge that looked more like a toolshed. It was filled with pickaxes, iron rods, sieve trays, and ore sacks. Musi and one of the men from last night lounged on an old leather couch drinking beers. The large flat-screen television mounted on the wall was on mute, showing the strutting moves of a rock star with bling flashing from his wrists and ears. From the backyard came the thump-thump of a huffing generator. Grace was working in the kitchen and ran to me, but the Wife pulled her back to the sink, scolding her to finish her work. Another woman was standing at a stove cooking. Jamu was being attended to by an older woman who scowled at me as we walked into the room.

“Jamu,” said my father, “Patson has something to say to you. I trust it’s not a deep cut, Prisca?”

“Deep enough,” the older woman replied. “It’s still bleeding.” Her hair was cut short like a boy’s and she wore a loose T-shirt and red boxer shorts that didn’t quite cover her bloated belly. Her legs were coated with the same dust that marked every member of the Banda family. This was not the normal dress of Shona women; but this was no normal family.

The younger woman left her cooking to peer under the cotton wool pressed to Jamu’s head. “You’ll be all right,” she said brightly.

“I suppose so, Amai,” he mumbled.

“It’s nothing to worry about, Joseph. I’m sure it was an accident,” she said.

“Thank you, Kuda,” said the Wife. “But Patson must apologize. He is your guest, after all.”

“Yes. Guests. Mmm,” said Prisca, not taking her eyes off me.

“Joseph?” demanded the Wife.

My father gently pushed me forward and I stood before Jamu, who glared at me. I mumbled my apologies.

“I can’t hear him, Amai,” complained Jamu.

“I said I was sorry you hurt your head.” My father squeezed my shoulder painfully. “And that I pushed you.”

“He’s not really sorry, Amai. Make him say it again. Properly,” Jamu protested, grinning at me the way a cat plays with a bird.

“Jamu, did you take something that was not yours?”

Every head in the room turned toward James Banda, sitting at the head of a table and bent over a small pile of stones spread on a black velvet cloth. A cylindrical magnifying glass seemed stuck in his right eye, and made his whole face look like a dried-up prune. With a pair of tweezers, he plucked a dark green pebble from the pile and studied it intently. He was a large man, with a thick, flabby neck and broad shoulders. His shaved head glistened with oil.

The Wife had often told us that her brother had once been the heavyweight champion of the Mutare region with sixteen knockouts to his credit. Although he had long since lost the muscles of a prizefighter, there was no doubting he could still knock out a man with a single blow. Yet his thick, gnarled boxer’s hands handled the tweezers and small stones as delicately as a surgeon’s.

“Come here and bring your cousin,” he said, not looking up from the table.

His words had an immediate effect on Jamu. The smirk slid from his face and he scrambled off the chair, pushed away the fussing hands of his mother, and dragged me toward his father. Uncle James continued sorting the pebbles, examining each briefly, then placing them, one by one, in smaller piles on the table.

Jamu and I stood before him, and Musi swiveled on the couch to get a better view. Then he pointed two fingers at me and cocked his thumb like the hammer of a gun. I wanted to wipe the stupid grin from his face with a shovel.

“Now, Jamu, you must answer me truthfully. I will ask you again. Did you take something that did not belong to you?” Banda spoke softly, like he might be asking about nothing more important than the weather.

Jamu was clearly terrified. Suddenly I felt sorry for him, being so afraid of his father.

“I was only looking at his phone,” mumbled Jamu.

“So you didn’t take his phone?” Uncle James lifted another stone toward the light.

Jamu hesitated.

“Jamu?”

“I took his phone.”

“Good, Jamu, you have spoken the truth. Now I will show you what happens when you take something that does not belong to you.”

“It was my fault, Uncle James,” I blurted out. “I left the phone lying around and I knocked him off the bed.”

Uncle James popped the magnifying glass out of his eye.

“So, the son of the schoolteacher defends the weak,” he said, looking at me for the first time. “Your name is Patson?”

I nodded.

“I hear a young lion in your voice, little prince. I shall remember that.” He pointed the tweezers at me. “Musi, come here. Bring Xaba. I want to show you something.”

The two young men ambled over to the table.

Uncle James indicated the pile of pebbles on the velvet cloth. “I’m disappointed with yesterday’s work. Mostly ngodas. One or two that might be low-grade girazi but it was a day of poor-quality ore. What do you think?” he asked, inviting them to inspect the stones.

The two of them leaned over the pile. Musi’s eyes gleamed and the tip of Xaba’s tongue flicked over his lips.

“Look closer but no touching,” said Uncle James, lifting his hands away from the table.

As Musi and Xaba bent lower, Uncle James clamped his hands onto their necks and smashed their foreheads into the table. With the crack of bone on wood, the pebbles leapt from their piles. Musi cried out in pain and reeled away holding his forehead, while Xaba struggled under Uncle James’s iron grip.

In the next moment, Xaba’s whimpering grew louder. Uncle James had inserted the tweezers into his nostril and was gripping the corner of his nose. He slowly turned the tweezers, twisting the fleshy part of his nose, forcing the man to his knees. A dark pearl of Xaba’s blood fell onto the table.

“So, Jamu, what have you learned?” asked Uncle James.

“You shouldn’t… I mean… Never take what doesn’t belong to you,” stammered Jamu.

“Good. And, more importantly, never take what belongs to me. If you do, I will hurt you badly,” he said, yanking out the tweezers and releasing Xaba.

“Come here, Musi,” he demanded as he carefully wiped the tweezers on the edge of the velvet cloth. “I won’t hurt you again, but next time you think about playing magombiro, I will. Now you two will return the sacks you stole last night and apologize to Alfred Mazezuru. Then you and your friends will spend the rest of today and tomorrow working for the Mazezuru syndicate. I will be proud to hear that you have sieved sixteen sacks each.” As the young men turned to leave, Uncle James added, “And, Xaba, instead of listening to the boss’s son, use the brains God gave you and make your own decisions. Now, get out of here, both of you.”

Halfway out the door, Musi shot me a glance as if I’d been the one who caused him this humiliation. Before I could even think to object, Uncle James had turned his attention back to me.

“Patson, come here.”

I took only a small step toward him, eyeing those tweezers warily.

“No, no, you don’t need to be afraid,” he said, and chuckled. “You’ve done nothing wrong. I want to show you my diamonds.” Uncle James lifted a few stones and dropped them into my hand. They looked like coarse chips of broken beer bottles: dark brown, black, and a strange shade of darkish green.

“You are holding over three thousand Usahs in your hands, Patson. Yes, that’s right. Three thousand American dollars,” he said, explaining the word Usahs to me. “Your son has never seen such wealth, hey, Mr. Schoolteacher?” He glanced at my father, standing at the other end of the table. “With those ugly ngodas you can have anything you want. Look closely at them, Patson, beyond their colors, feel their knobbly, smooth shapes. These are the stones of midzimu, the land spirits of Marange. If you are good to your ancestors, they will guide you to ngodas. Once your shavi allows it, finding such stones as these is easy. But first, you have to be pure in your heart, Patson, or your shavi will hide from you. Are you pure of heart, Patson?”

I studied the tiny stones. It was hard to believe that I was holding three thousand American dollars in the palm of my hand. It was a fortune beyond imagining. These stones could be mine. I could own all that money.

Uncle James gripped my wrist and turned my palm firmly, until the rough, uncut diamonds fell back onto the table. I stared at the stones, no longer in my grasp. A fortune had slipped through my fingers. Uncle James studied me for a moment and then removed a small leather pouch hanging from around his neck. A single glassy stone, the size of my thumbnail, fell onto the velvet cloth.

“Come closer, Patson,” he said. “You want to see my most precious of all stones? This is the greatest of gifts from the midzimu. A girazi. This little beauty was one of the first diamonds found here. Cut and polished, it’s a gem of tremendous quality. At least eight or nine carats, worth over fifty thousand Usahs. 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. I should have stepped back from the table, away from that girazi glittering between Uncle James’s fingers. Instead, all I seemed able to do was imagine what a gift like that from the land spirits could do if it belonged to me. Fifty thousand American dollars. The sum of money seemed unimaginable. The things I could do with fifty thousand American dollars, the things that money could bring to my family. It would change all our lives forever. We could eat meat every night. We could buy a house. My father could have a car. I could go to university and my sister could go to a private school. An endless list of possibilities raced through my head.

“You do want to be a man, Patson?” Uncle James lifted the girazi to the light again.

I nodded, mesmerized by the diamond.

Then it vanished into the leather pouch around his neck. “Your initiation into manhood begins on the diamond fields. There you will learn what it is to become a man.”

“Patson,” said my father. “Come here, son. My boy will be going to school, James. The mines are not for him.”

I could be a miner. I could find my own stones. I didn’t need to go to school.

“Just a moment, Baba,” I said as Uncle James folded the corners of his velvet cloth over and around my future.