Note for tragic young mum
George and her husband were enjoying a holiday in Napier when their neighbour phoned her to let her know her daughter had been found dead. She said her six-hour journey back to Orewa was filled with fear, disbelief and denial.
‘‘I was just in total shock. I just needed to see her; otherwise, I wasn’t going to believe it.’’
She described Aziza as a ‘‘beautiful, talented, tortured soul of a woman’’ who was kind and generous. ‘‘Amber was a wonderful mother, and I know she didn’t mean to do this. She was a happy person and never in a million years did I think she would do that,’’ George said.
Her daughter had a lovely sense of humour: ‘‘She was hilarious. That’s why everyone that knows her is so shocked what she’s done.’’
However, she said her daughter, like others who suffer from dark issues, was really good at hiding her pain.
According to her, Aziza had a happy childhood ‘‘in her own fantasy world’’, and she loved to be in the forest where her imagination could take over. ‘‘She was a child that believed in fairies and other things like that.’’
George said Aziza had returned from Egypt a few weeks before her death after meeting her biological father Moses for the first time.
‘‘She decided to spend all her savings to go over and meet him,’’ George said. ‘‘It was a spiritual journey for her, she went with her baby, and they got to know her, too. She just loved meeting her family and cousins there.’’
George explained that when she was younger, she fell in love and married Aziza’s father while exploring Cairo in 1992. Unhappy with the constraints of an Islamic marriage, she returned to New Zealand not knowing she was pregnant – nine months later Aziza was born.
George and her husband will now raise their grandchildren, 10-year-old Jamie and one-yearold Shiloh. ‘‘You’ll never find anyone like her again.’’