Episode 2: Kimberlite

“I was a diamond that didn’t yet know it was the hardest material in the world. I thought my purpose was to be the ‘good daughter’ and the ‘loyal girlfriend,’ never suspecting that the tectonic plates of my life were just about to crack.”

— Magma Star

Belgrade in the eighties. It was the center of the world, a city that had everything, and I stepped into it as a student from Dalmatia, carrying within me the scent of the sea and that quiet fear of rejection I had dragged along from childhood.

In geology, kimberlite is a rough, dark rock that hides diamonds in its bowels. That is exactly how I felt—like something unremarkable, wrapped in layers of other people’s rules and expectations. I was free from my parents, but I immediately fell into a new mold. I met a guy, a Belgrade local, who “reserved” me before I had even managed to breathe the air of the metropolis.

He went to Iraq, and I, guided by that old Dalmatian upbringing (“the one you sleep with first is the one you marry”), wrote letters every single day. While my new friends enjoyed my different energy and Mediterranean mentality, I was actually in a state of emotional waiting. I was waiting for someone who, when he returned a year later, never let me go again.

In those student days, under the pressure of studying and that early, serious love, my diamond began to emerge, but it still didn’t have its shine. I was precious, but deeply hidden in the rock of loyalty and discipline. I didn’t know my worth.

Belgrade gave me breadth, but it hadn’t yet given me the key to my freedom.