Sometimes the things we dig up should stay buried. That’s
what Mat Sam learned in ‘65, though by the time he figured it out, it was
already too late. Way too goddamn late.
Mat Sam led a crew of diamond panners in Cempaka, a village
so deep in the South Kalimantan forests you couldn’t find it with a map and a
prayer. The kind of place where electricity was still considered somewhat
magical and folks went to bed not long after the sun dipped below the tree
line. These men spent their days hunched over in muddy pits, hands raw and bleeding,
sifting through sludge and hoping—always hoping—for that glint of something
valuable.
(I’ve seen men like this before, in the quarries of Maine
and the coal mines of Pennsylvania. There’s something in their eyes, a
combination of desperate hope and bone-deep fatigue that you don’t forget once
you’ve seen it.)
On August 26, 1965, the day that would split Mat Sam’s life
into before and after, the air hung heavy with moisture, clinging to the skin
like a desperate lover. The clouds above Sungai Tiung were the color of wet
newsprint. Mat Sam’s lower back ached something fierce as he bent over his pan
for what must have been the thousandth time that day. His fingers, wrinkled and
pruned from hours in the water, moved automatically, sifting through the muck.
And then—Christ almighty!—there it was.
The diamond sat in his pan like a goddamn joke, almost
comically large against the dark earth. Reddish-blue. Nearly the size of a
pigeon’s egg. The kind of thing you’d expect to see in a museum behind
bulletproof glass, not in the calloused palm of a man who owned exactly two
pairs of pants.
“Holy shit,” he whispered, and even though the jungle around
him was loud with birds and insects and the grunts of his forty-three
teammates, a sudden hush fell, as if every living thing knew something
momentous had just occurred.
(That’s how the universe works sometimes, isn’t it? It falls
silent when the trap is about to spring.)
According to the Pikiran Rakyat newspaper—and
newspapers don’t lie, do they, constant reader?—the diamond weighed 166.75
carats. They said it was only a bit smaller than the legendary Koh-i-Noor that
sits in the British Crown. Worth around Rp3.5 billion. More money than Mat Sam
could earn in ten lifetimes.
The news spread through Indonesia like a virus—faster than
should have been possible in a place with spotty phone service and roads that
washed out every time it rained. But bad news for the powerful travels at the
speed of greed, and by God, this was bad news for a lot of powerful people.
Because how dare a simple miner like Mat Sam find something so valuable? How
dare he think it might change his life?
President Sukarno himself—the man whose portrait hung in
every government building from Jakarta to the furthest jungle outpost—named the
gem “Intan Trisakti.” A fancy name for a rock that was about to bring nothing
but misery.
Now, I want you to imagine Mat Sam’s thoughts as he lay in
bed those first few nights. The phantom weight of the diamond still pressed
against his palm as he stared at the ceiling of his modest home. Dreams of a
better life for his family. His son could go to university. His wife wouldn’t
have to work herself to the bone anymore. Maybe they’d move to a house where
the roof didn’t leak during the monsoon season.
Poor bastard. He had no idea what was coming.
The government men arrived in their pressed uniforms and
polished shoes that looked obscenely clean against the mud of Cempaka. They
spoke of development and progress and the future of South Kalimantan. Such
pretty words. Such utter bullshit.
They took the diamond—took it, you understand—under
the pretext that it would help develop better mining technology. For the
greater good, they said. For Indonesia.
(The greater good. That’s always the excuse, isn’t it? When
they’re taking what’s yours.)
The Angkatan Bersenjata newspaper later reported,
with the careful neutrality of the truly terrified, that the diamond was “taken
to Jakarta for security reasons” and that this was done “against the wishes of
the finder/owner.” Those seven words—against the wishes of the
finder/owner—hide a universe of pain and intimidation.
And then, like something from a magician’s act, the Intan
Trisakti vanished. Poof! Gone! Some say it ended up in Europe, sold on
the black market. Others whisper that it sits in a government vault somewhere,
waiting. Me? I think objects like that have a way of surfacing when they’re
ready to cause more pain. They’re patient that way.
Mat Sam and his crew received what the government called “equivalent
compensation.” Rp3.5 billion old money, which after the currency redenomination
became Rp3.5 million new money. A fortune on paper. In reality? A cruel joke.
From that sum, Rp960,000 went into a bank account to pay for
the Hajj pilgrimage for Mat Sam, his family, and eighty-some others. The
government presented this as a gift. A blessing. Go thank your God for the
wonderful opportunity we’ve given you, Mat Sam. Don’t mind that we’ve stolen
your miracle.
The remaining money was divided among the team according to
their shares. And then—because the universe wasn’t done fucking with Mat Sam
yet—the government implemented a sanering, wiping out three zeros from
the currency. What little wealth they had evaporated like morning dew under a
merciless sun.
Mat Sam and his colleagues demanded more compensation. Their
voices grew hoarse from shouting into the void. No one listened. No one cared.
The regime changed from Sukarno to Suharto, but the indifference remained
constant.
Years passed. Decades. Mat Sam’s hair turned gray, then
white. His hands, once strong enough to work fourteen hours in the mines, grew
gnarled with arthritis. His dreams shriveled and died, one by one, like plants
in salted earth.
“I do not regret finding that diamond,” he told a reporter
in the 1980s, his voice as dry and cracked as the land during drought season. “But
I regret living in a country that never gives opportunities for the common
people to enjoy the blessings from their own land.”
Those words hung in the air like a curse. And maybe they
were.
Haji Madsalam—Mat Sam to his friends and family—died in
1993, still waiting for justice that never came. Still dreaming of the diamond
that had slipped through his fingers like water.
In Cempaka, they still pan for gold and diamonds. Tourists
come now, their clean clothes and expensive cameras marking them as clearly as
if they wore signs around their necks. They play at being miners for an hour or
two, then return to air-conditioned hotels, never knowing the true cost of what
glitters in the mud.
And somewhere—in a vault, in a museum, around the neck of
someone obscenely wealthy—the Intan Trisakti continues its silent work. Because
that’s what cursed objects do. They wait. They watch. They remember.
Just ask Mat Sam.
Oh wait, you can’t. He’s gone now, buried in the same earth
that gave up its treasure and sealed his fate.
But sometimes, when the night is particularly dark in
Cempaka and the jungle falls unnaturally silent, the old-timers swear they can
hear the sound of his pan sifting through mud and rocks. Searching. Always
searching.
For what could have been. For what should have been.
For justice.
“In my land that is rich. Hiding precious stones. Containers
stored in the earth. Becoming the desire of the entire country...”
The lyrics of “Galuh Cempaka” hang in the humid air like a
promise. Or a warning.
Sometimes, constant reader, it’s hard to tell the
difference.
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