Diamond in the Sand

In 1988 a TWA flight from Madrid to Cairo experienced something all Flight Attendants dread: The passenger door flew open. Among the belongings that were sucked out was a many-carat diamond broach worn by a movie star. Ten years later a nomadic herdsman, a small boy entrusted with the family goats, stumbled across the gem when it slipped through his sandals and stuck between his toes.

Ooma had no idea what he held as he stared into the perfectly cut faces of the invaluable stone. But his keen eyes saw its symmetry and was amazed how it reflected the sun so brightly and in so many ways. To him the stone was a marvel. He tucked it into his leather pouch.

In time, Ooma was schooled at a missionary village. From there he was chosen to be an exchange student. At twenty-one he found himself at the University of California in Los Angeles. All the while he carried his lucky stone --- now in the very city where the movie star who had so unceremoniously lost it lived.

Angela Bristol was not only a movie star of the highest repute, a celebrity of the first order, but a true philanthropist at heart. She saved a great deal of the money she made in movies in order to give to world-wide humanitarian causes. One cause was helping the natives in the newly

industrialized countries that bespeckled the Sahara. And one of these areas was the very spot that Ooma and his ancestral family had roamed for centuries. Now huge, oil-spilling rigs clanged throughout the desert where once the nomads wandered freely across the endless sand. Like all sudden cultural expansions, the natives found themselves in a strange land where they were expected to wear funny-fitting clothes, use indoor toilets, work with tools they were unaccustomed to, and live far closer to others than ever they dreamed. And, of course, be exposed to the white man's diseases and strange cures given behind white masks and rubber-imprisoned fingers. Angela wanted to educate the human transplants, to pour her money into the exchange students so they could return to their homeland and better the sordid conditions through what they'd learned in America.

Occasionally the movie star-philanthropist held garden parties at her palatial estate in Beverly Hills. She hired special cooks for these occasions, men and women schooled in the dishes and delicacies of the plains of Northern Africa. She wore the clothing common to the region, her bronzed-bare shoulders and arms gleaming from the garments far more sylishly than the students were used to at home. During these afternoons Angela Bristol would sit with the students and have them share their memories of their childhoods and native land. It was at one such party that Ooma revealed his lucky stone.

Angela was not a surface, glamour-oriented actress but a true and profound artist. As such, she operated on intuition, on perception and deep feeling. When the small, wiry black man showed his lucky stone and told how he'd found it in the sea of sand, Ms Bristol sensed something strange. Used to dealing with the concrete, she produced a map of Ooma's region, then traced the flight she'd taken over the desert twelve years

before. Staring at the glistening diamond and map, she realize the gem was hers.

The students watched the famous woman as she seemed to go into a trance. As if transfixed by a mystical power, the beautiful woman seemed to react in a way peculiar to Americans, especially white movie stars. What was happening inside the woman, however, was an internal dialogue that challenged any philosophers of ages past. The old arguments of change and coincidence, free will and fate, reincarnation and karma, all poured through her. How, truly in God's name, could this twenty year-old North African have found the very diamond that had been torn off her and landed in the middle of the Sahara desert amidst trillions of granules, how could he possibly have shown up twelve years later at her house in California across the sea? Angela was transfixed by the mystery.

From the moment of recognition and profound awe, Angela said not a word. She never feigned ownership because she knew it would obligate the native. In her mind the stone ceased to be hers the instant it flew out the jet door. She knew that Ooma would feel he must surrender the stone since it was originally hers, that he had a duty to serve the woman since her power had brought them together. Ms. Bristol knew this and wanted no part of it. She wanted Ooma to live as free as he was born. Besides, hehadfound it.

Instead of reacting overtly, Angela interpreted the phenomenal incident as a sign. She felt it was her responsibility to take care of the young man. That somehow she was obligated to take care of Ooma's family, tribe, and village. So Angela Bristol created a life-long trust fund so that the natives' security was guaranteed thereafter.

Who knows why such things happen? Had the prominent, international figure belonged to Ooma's tribe in a former life and this was God's way of

creating a reunion? Had she, at some time, done harm to Ooma's people and this was the karmic pay-off? Was finding the diamond nothing more than pure chance, or had his gods had a hand in it in order to bring the two together? Was Ooma an innocent agent of the Great Cause, destined to bring wealth, comfort, and change to the former nomadic peoples? For all that Angela surrendered to her deaper self hoping that intuition would clarify the issue, the movie star found no answer. All she could do was give to Ooma.

Weeks after the garden party Ms. Bristol wrote in her journal. She entertained the possibility that what she'd experienced occurred frequently. That through time thousands, perhaps millions of people had undergone similar situations, though perhaps not as dramatic as hers. But maybe only a few of them had been aware of them. She contemplated the possibility that such common or rare incidents gave mankind cause to ponder the Great Unknown, to focus on God, to stand in awe at His magnificent Master Plan, for when she'd stared at the many-faced, multi-carat diamond shown by the nomadic tribesman-turned student, she couldn't help feeling that there was an extricable bond between all beings and forces through all places and all time.

In Angela's mind, the tale of the diamond outshone all off the actress' awards combined.