Take a look at Lily's fate from beginning to end; her parents are neglectful and spoiled, often behaving selfishly and ostracizing their own daughter in the home. Then, they are violently murdered and she is raised by a family friend, a recent convert to Islam, and she goes from being the neglected child of spoiled parents to being a student of the Great Abdal, the famous Sufi mystic. This is the story of religious awakening, through the lens of Islam.
By becoming orphaned in a Muslim nation, Lily unknowingly finds herself on a track toward religious enlightenment, because Islam is so dedicated to helping the homeless, the orphans, and the widows of any community, so Lily is given a second chance at life through the teachings of a religion her parents never followed, but then again, how good of parents even were they? Instead of seeing the religion for its dogma, Lily's point of view allows us to see it as an orphan.
The full weight of this religious conversion is seen when Lily is ripped from her would-be husband, Aziz, and from her home in Ethiopia (not to mention the Muslim world) to London, in an ironic twist. She left London as a child of England, but she comes back as a loud, bold catalyst for a new kind of order in London, one that accepts her as a Muslim, even though she is not ethnically Middle Eastern. She wants her community to know that her religion is an inextricable part of her life, but that is also what she wants to tell everyone. It is a religious confession.
