Sweetness in the Belly
by Camilla Gibb
320pp, Heinemann, £12.99
"I am a white Muslim woman raised in Africa, now employed by the National Health Service," declares Lily, the protagonist of Camilla Gibb's third novel, which shifts between a concrete council estate in Thatcher's London and the ancient city of Harar in Haile Selaisse's Ethiopia during the 1970s.
Lily's early childhood is spent travelling on an extended pan-European holiday with her nomadic hippy parents. When this Anglo-Irish couple relocates to Morocco, she is left to play in the streets of Tangier while they lie stoned out of their minds in a crumbling hotel. The family then travels to a Sufi shrine in Bilal al Habash, near the Sahara, where her parents are mysteriously murdered in an alleyway. In the absence of close family to claim her, fellow Englishman and Islamic convert Mohammed Bruce assumes guardianship, and arranges for the eight-year-old Lily to be brought up in the Sufi shrine itself, under the aegis of the spiritual guide Great Abdal. Lily spends the rest of her childhood studying the Qur'an, and little else. So far, so extraordinary.
Aged 16, Lily undertakes a gruelling overland spiritual pilgrimage from Morocco to Ethiopia, where she boards with a poor family, earning her keep through teaching the Qur'an to local children. Over many years, Lily, the white outsider, the devout Muslim, the foreigner who sticks out like a sore thumb, immerses herself in the superstitious, conformist community she has joined and begins to find acceptance. She falls in love with a local doctor, Aziz, himself an outsider because of his very dark skin. The simmering, unspoken nature of their passion is a sensuously written undercurrent running through the novel.
Fast forward 10 years and Lily is in exile in Britain, having had no news from Aziz during this time. She is now a nurse and refugee worker living with her Ethiopian friend Amina and other immigrants in a run-down council estate. She still holds a torch for Aziz - a flame which keeps her resolutely celibate and longing for a reunion.
There is nothing mundane about this very accomplished novel, even when it lingers on the domestic as a device to get into the heart of daily life in Ethiopia, where Gibb's astonishing use of sensory detail is vibrant and palpable. Likewise on the council estate in London, which is suffused with incense burning over coals, coffee beans roasting in tin plates and spiced with cardamon. However, for all its undoubted strengths, the narrative suspense is in danger of disappearing during some fascinating but lengthy descriptions of Ethiopian culture: the research is sometimes not quite assimilated. Here Gibb's cerebral and informative prose style is more suited to academia than fiction. And although the narrative is relayed in Lily's voice, she never emerges with quite enough personality to come off the page.
This is a profound novel, exploring themes of female circumcision, politics, war, tribalism, yet it is also an exquisite homage to Islam. Some of the most beautiful passages are about Lily's faith. Islam is her guiding force, as she seeks to discover the true meaning of jihad, "The holy war we have within ourselves ... Our internal struggle for purity."
· Bernardine Evaristo's Soul Tourists is published by Hamish Hamilton.
