In a post on Facebook, Laura once wrote:
“I’m very strong-willed and proud, but intensely private and not easy to know well. Behind my quiet exterior lies a great deal of emotional depth, sensitivity, complexity, and also fierce determination. When I want something, I go after it rather quietly, but intensely and wholeheartedly, and I usually get it. I am, in many ways, an eternal child.
My mind is bright, alert, curious, flexible, playful, and always eager for new experiences, and my attention span is often quite brief. I grasp ideas quickly, and once the initial curiosity has been satisfied, I move on to something else. I crave constant change, variety, meeting new people, and new situations. But when in love, well, that is a whole new ball game on its own.”
She also wrote:
“The best way to understand something or someone is to learn about them , like if you want to understand a fruit and what it tastes like ,
you would feel it, touch it, taste it, listen to it if it could make a sound and look and analyse it………
so just as if you want to know “about Me’ U would have to figure it out for yourself…………
just as life is a Journey, so is everything else…
a unique Journey of Discovery…^^
For how i am to one person is not the same as how i would be to another,
for life is a Chemical reaction based on energy, so an action creates a reaction….
so one person may bring the best out of someone, and another the worst….
so depends on the chemistry …:D”
Laura was born in the early hours of the morning in Johannesburg on 1 July 1976, a Tuesday’s child and a Cancerian. Her birth was registered with the Portuguese Consulate in Johannesburg, and South African Home Affairs, granting her dual citizenship, South African and Portuguese.
Towards the end of her life, she was quiet and reserved, serious and intense, intuitive and sensitive, and largely positive about life. Being empathetic and perceptive, she was often overwhelmed by negativity, preferring her own company to being with insincere or superficial people.
This left her alone and lonely much of the time. I told her she thought too much and needed to step out of the shadows. She liked the idea but remained trapped in her own way of seeing the world.
She was also fiery, passionate and direct, and did not play games in a world of games.
Almost in contradiction, she had a childlike innocence and purity that gave her a sense of serenity in the face of so much adversity. Her defiance hid the hurt she carried every day.
She explored different belief systems – Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Sufism, and Theosophy. Questioning and seeking meaning in a world where she often felt she did not belong.
Ultimately, she embraced Islam.
At the time, I didn’t realise that while she was studying in Johannesburg, she had formally accepted the Islamic faith. “A journey between Allah and I, which has been hard, trials, sadness, confusion, yet miracles happen after long periods of trials. Allah helps those even when no human does,” she wrote. The book tells Laura’s story—her life, her vulnerabilities, and her complex psychological struggles. It explores the emotional collapse she experienced, catalysed by an unrequited love that began in 2009 with a man referred to here as Youssef*, a figure who would have a profound and enduring influence on her life…”
From the book: “She knew Dubai was bad for her, yet she couldn’t let it go. She said her soul belonged there. And of course, the love of her life, the mysterious Emirati she had met in 2009, lived there.
I remembered the photograph she shared with me on WhatsApp in September 2012 shortly before her visit to South Africa, a headshot of a swarthy Arab, older than I expected.
She had finally given him a name: Youssef* (not his real name). As I later understood, he was a powerful and wealthy local Emirati businessman with high level connections. His name has been changed for privacy and legal reasons.” This site also ensures that Laura is remembered, and her voice is heard, not only through the circumstances surrounding her death, but through her thoughts, her notes, her choice of music, her view of life, and the personal material she left behind.
She was thoughtful, creative, and expressive, leaving behind work and reflections that provide insight into her character and perspective.
Her writings, music, and personal reflections reveal how she understood and engaged with the world.
Her Writings
“A journey between Allah and I, which has been hard, trials, sadness, confusion, yet miracles happen after long periods of trials. Allah helps those even when no human does,”
Messages
From Laura to Youssef on 16 November 2014 at 00:13, her suicide note to Youssef on Facebook, posted with the “Only Me” option:
“You are My Heart, You are my Life…You are the Woman I have become and everything that I Live for and Everything that I have ever Searched for. I Love you for your Weaknesses and Strengths. I Love You For the Man you are. I Love you for the Blessings you Bring to Everyone. Yet most of all I Love you for your Heart and Soul.
My Beloved One…There is no other man in this World that I want to be with, for there is no other Man whose Soul reflects my Own. I Love You.”
From Laura In a message to her friend Christopher, written on 21 October 2013 while she was living in Portugal.
“And something else I would like to say so that you may better understand from where this is coming…my expression, my pain and hurt, anger, sense of being lost, and not understanding why and where I went wrong.
This is all coming out because of a man I love, and it was divine experience where love is allowing me to heal. And I still love him very much and am having a hard time letting go of him, and I think that once I have worked with all this energy inside me, I will be more open to loving him and letting him go.”
Featured image: Selfie edited by Laura seven days before her suicide
From the book:
17 January 2012, Laura was at Youssef’s* house. He went inside and selected this song which meant so much to Laura. In an email she wrote to him after the party: “And when you turned up the volume of our song…my heart and eyes glowed…I was talking to L…and all of a sudden, I just looked at you. And all I wanted to do at that moment was to hold you and kiss you. When you got up and went inside, I just wanted to follow you, but instead I took my mobile, sent you a message, for that is all I could do to let you know I understood!
And when I got up and took my phone, silence became the night, everyone was silent and watching…like time stood still for a split second and the universe was engaging in our moment.”
Photographs
Last Visit to South Africa
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