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An evocative and richly imagined story of a British Muslim woman's search for love and belonging in two very different worlds.
Penguin
March 2006
352 pages
ISBN: 159420084X
Hardcover
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Fiction
When Lilly is eight years old, her pot-smoking hippie
British parents leave her at a Sufi shrine in Morocco and
inform her they will be back to collect her in three days.
Three weeks later, she learns they've been murdered. Lilly
fills that haunted hollow in her life with intense study and
memorization of the Qur'an under the patient care of the
Sufi saint's disciple she was entrusted to. Years later, her
journey from Morocco to Harar, Ethiopia, is half pilgrimage,
half flight. In Harar, even her very traditional Muslim head
scarves cannot hide her white skin in her new and strange
surroundings; the word "farenji"--foreigner--is hissed at
her everywhere she turns. She eventually builds a life for
herself teaching children the Qur'an, and she finds herself
falling in love with an idealistic young doctor. But the two
are wrenched apart when Lilly is again forced to flee, for
her safety and his, this time to London. Despite her British
roots, Lilly discovers she is as much an outsider in London
as a Muslim as she was in Harar as a white foreigner. Gibb's haunting narrative takes us seamlessly on a journey
between these two distinct worlds: the ancient walled city
of Harar and the racially charged atmosphere of 1980s
London. Gibb richly evokes the stinging disconnect between
Lilly's past life and her present life, between her attempts
to start anew and her inability to let go of the past.
Lilly's story is laced with longing and regret, but above
all hope--hope that time and love can heal the rifts of her
turbulent past. Camilla Gibb has pulled off an astounding
feat with this stunning novel; never has the distinct and
troubled history of this corner of Ethiopia been told with
such humanity, warmth, clarity, and grace.
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