Sweetness In The Belly
Camilla Gibb
Fiction
338 pages
copytright: 2005
isbn: 1-59420-084-x
Lilly, the main character of Camilla Gibb’s stunning new novel, has anything
but a stable childhood. The daughter of English/Irish hippies, she was “born in
Yugoslavia, breast-fed in the Ukraine, weaned in Corsica, freed from nappies in
Sicily and walking by the time [they] got to the Algarve…” The family’s nomadic
adventure ends in Tangier when Lilly’s parents are killed in a drug deal gone
awry. Orphaned at eight, Lilly is left in the care of a Sufi sheikh, who shows
her the way of Islam through the Qur’an. When political turmoil erupts, Lilly,
now sixteen, is sent to the ancient walled city of Harar, Ethiopia, where she
stays in a dirt-floored compound with an impoverished widow named Nouria and
her four children.
In Harar, Lilly earns her keep by helping with the household chores and
teaching local children the Qur’an. Ignoring the cries of “farenji”
(foreigner), she slowly begins to put down roots, learning the language and
immersing herself in a culture rich in customs and rituals and lush with
glittering bright headscarves, the chorus of muezzins and the scent of incense
and coffee. She is drawn to an idealistic half-Sudanese doctor named Aziz, and
the two begin to meet every Saturday at a social gathering. As they stay behind
to talk, Lilly finds her faith tested for the first time in her life: “The
desire to remain in his company overwhelmed common sense; I would pick up my
good Muslim self on the way home.” Just as their love begins to blossom, they
are wrenched apart when the aging emperor Haile Selassie is deposed by the
brutal Dergue regime. Lilly seeks exile in London, while Aziz stays topursue
his revolutionary passions.
In London, Lilly’s life as a white Muslim is no less complicated. A hospital
staff nurse, she befriends a refugee from Ethiopia named Amina, whose daughter
she helped to deliver in a back alley. The two women set up a community
association to re-unite refugees with lost family members. Their work, however,
isn’t entirely altruistic. Both women are looking for someone: Amina, her
husband, Yusuf, and Lilly, Aziz, who remains firmly, painfully, implanted in
her heart.
The first-person narrative alternates seamlessly between England (1981-91) and
Ethiopia (1970-74), weaving a rich tapestry of one woman’s quest to maintain
faith and love through revolution, upheaval and the alienation of life in exile.
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