Speech By Rupert Morris    

A ceremony to celebrate the lives of

 Nazy Mozakka

18^th September 1957 – 7^th July 2005

and

Mala Trivedi

17^th August 1953 – 7^th July 2005

Held at

Conway Hall

Wednesday, 5^th October 2005

Led by

Rupert Morris

(BHA Officiant)

75a Ridgmount Gardens, London WC1E 7AX

Tel: 020 7580 4564

Email: Rupert@clarity4words.co.uk

Good afternoon, and welcome to Conway Hall for this ceremony to honour the memory of Nazy Mozakka and Mala Trivedi, whose lives were so brutally cut short on 7^th July. My name is Rupert Morris and I am accredited by the British Humanist Association to conduct funerals and memorial services. Funerals for Nazy and Mala have already been held in accordance with both families’ wishes. This ceremony will be non-religious, but every one of you here should feel fully included. Later, when we have heard some tributes and readings, we will observe a period of silent contemplation – and this will be an opportunity for all of you to reflect on the lives of these two women, and to pray if you wish.

 We may differ in our faiths, in our spiritual leanings, but we share a common humanity, with many of the same perceptions and values. In the aftermath of that appalling atrocity of 7^th July, it was the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, who spoke for many of us when he said that people of all faiths and none would be united in horror, sadness and solidarity – a solidarity that sprang from our shared belief in the sanctity of human life. For that is what the murderers violated. And it is because we believe in the sanctity, importance and integrity of every human life that we are here today, to mark the lives of Nazy and Mala, to honour them for all that they achieved, to grieve for them, and to draw strength from their example. We need to assert that their lives mattered.

We want to offer our support to the families they have left behind, to Nazy’s husband Nader, their children Saba and Saaed, and to Nazy’s parents, although they cannot be with us today, and to every other member of their family. We feel the same towards Mala’s husband Ashok, their son Kunaal, and to all the Trivedi family. You, Nazy and Mala’s families, know how much their lives mattered, and we hope that you will draw strength from knowing that they mattered to so many other people too.

 Now I’m going to talk a little about each of them in turn, then hand over to colleagues and family friends for more personal tributes and reminiscences. This will be an emotional occasion, and no one should be embarrassed to cry – or to feel anger towards those who took your innocent loved ones from you. 

I shall begin with Nazy. 

Nazy Nazhand was born in Shiraz, in the south of Iran, on the 18^th September 1957, where her mother was a headmistress, her father a government employee, working in the land registry. She was one of seven children. When she was five or six, the family moved to Tehran. Nazy continued her studies, at which she was notably successful. In the holidays she enjoyed reading the great Iranian poets like Hafez. Another great Iranian poet was Omar Khayaam, whose Rubaiyat is was well known in its English translation. Nazy’s husband Nader has asked me if in the course of this ceremony I would read two quatrains from that work, and this is the first of them:

Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same Door as in I went.

Nazy won a place to study biochemistry at university in Tehran, where her keen social conscience soon drew her towards the student movement, in which Nader Mozakka, who was to become her husband, was an activist. Iran at the time was under the autocratic rule of the Shah, who controlled the entire political process, and the media. This control was enforced by his secret police, who infiltrated every walk of life, including the universities. Students who wanted to explore ideas to do with democracy and freedom of speech had to do so under cover. Almost the only environment in which such revolutionary ideas could be freely discussed was in one of the student societies, such as the mountain-climbing society, whose activities took place well away from the campus eavesdroppers. This was where Nader and Nazy got to know each other, and by the time Nazy graduated and they got married in 1979, the Shah had been ousted and the revolution they had dreamed of had arrived. Or so they hoped. Nazy went to work as a biochemist at a university college in Tehran, and in 1981 their daughter Saba was born, followed a year later by their son Saeed. 

In England Nazy studied English at Kingsway College, where she rapidly achieved a Cambridge First Certificate. Soon she too found a job – as a lab technician at St Thomas’s. In 1987 she completed a research project analysing and comparing the performances of different pregnancy kits. Soon she became knowledgeable about computers. In 1988 she moved to the Royal Free Hospital, where she spent three years, again working as a lab technician, until she decided she wanted to spend more time with her children.

 For more than seven years, she took a term-time-only position as a community development worker with Save the Children. She loved this work, and took a particular interest in providing after-school and educational support for gipsy families, whose children were often marginalized outside school hours. She made sure that they had books to read, and would organise theatre and cinema trips.

 At this point it seems appropriate to read that other verse from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayaam:

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust Descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer and--sans End!

Nazy certainly made the most of the time she spent among you. Even more important was that she wanted to make sure everybody else got the most out of whatever they were doing. Hence her work for gipsy families, hence her determination to reduce her workload as soon as she could so that she could be there for her children, and hence also the fact that when she and Nader felt able to return to Iran, she thought first and foremost of her parents, now in their eighties and increasingly frail. She felt she owed them much for the happy childhood she had enjoyed, and so from 2001, when her children were now able to choose their own holidays, she decided that whatever spare time she had she would devote to her parents. When she was in London, she telephoned them at the same time every Friday, and when she had earned a week’s holiday, she would catch the first flight she could to Tehran, to spend time with them, looking after them, taking them out, shopping and making sure that they were well provided for until her next visit.

 This natural, unforced altruism was a part of Nazy wherever she was. She combined it with a sense of fun that made everyone feel at home – not least her work colleagues to whom, I gather, she was a constantly reassuring presence, a mother figure in many ways, yet also an enthusiastic party girl. At which point, I should like to hand over to Anne Sheldrake, her immediate boss at Great Ormond Street, where she worked for the past seven years.

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