Lilly is the only child of a couple of wandering, hippy English parents: "born in Yugoslavia, breast-fed in the Ukraine, weaned in Corsica, freed from nappies in Sicily and walking by the time we got to the Algarve." In Morocco, she's left in the care of the Great Abdal while her parents go jaunting, only to learn she is suddenly an orphan. Raised by the Great Abdal, a muslim Sheikh, and Mohammed Bruce Mahmoud, a "fiery-haired" ex-British Muslim convert, she found that "once I was led into the absorption of prayer and the mysteries of the Qu'ran, something troubled in me became still." When she is 16, she and her friend Hussein make a pilgrimage to the city of Harar in Ethiopia, to the compound of Sheikh Jami Abdullah Rahman, direct descendent of a saint. On route, they stay at the Emperor of Ethiopia's palace, courtesy of a letter of introduction from Mohammed Bruce. Because Lilly is farenji (white), and the Sheikh is very racist (as is everyone else she encounters there), she is separated from Hussein and sent to live with the sister of the Sheikh's third wife, Noura, an Oromo, while Hussein stays to be one of his disciples. Lilly learns the language of the Hararans, who are not black but consider themselves Arab, who use the local Oromo population as serfs and combine old tradition with Islam. She falls in love with Aziz, a young local doctor, half Hraran, half Sudanese, almost an outcast because he is black. He introduces her to a less all-pervasive interpretation of Islam, and politics. Famine strikes the north while the Emperor has cavier flown in from Europe for his own dinner. Unrest stirs, the soldiers take over in the name of communism and quickly put in place a military dictatorship. Lilly escapes being rounded up with anyone else who has ties to the Emperor, though she never met him, and makes it to London where she becomes a nurse and, with her friend Amina, sets up an office to keep track of all the refugees, uniting them with family members, all in the hope of finding Aziz's name on a list.I loved this book. It's become one of my favourites, easily so, and - strangely enough, given the subject matter - I would even call it a comfort read. It's a dark story yet I did not find it depressing for a second, due to the quality of the writing. Gibb has a light touch, and holds back from telling us what to feel or how to react: reading this book was like feeling a breeze against your cheek. Even brutality is rendered bittersweet through the light touch of Gibb's word choices. It is never saccharine, never melodrammatic, and opens a door into a world few of us have any idea or understanding of.A couple of things I didn't understand: why did Lilly and Hussein stay in Ethiopia, and how did she manage to get through nurse training in England when she'd had no formal education? Minor quibbles...There are some brutal moments in the story. Most especially disturbing is the scene of female circumscion, which did make me turn green, riveted though I was. I'd seen it on an SBS documentary years ago, the first time I learned that it happened at all (it is illegal, but still practised in many places). The Ethiopan sections are set in the 1970s (Lilly is 19 when she flees), which is not so very long ago. They believed it made women pure, that it kept them from being "on heat", and that they would never get a husband if they weren't infibulated. It's quite terrifying. As Aziz points out, though, it's not actually an Islamic tradition.But there is a beautiful, delicate balance between the more horrific traditions and superstitions, Islam and a more modern way of thinking. Lilly, as narrator, is never shaken from her beliefs, though she has occasion to question her own nature. She shows a human side to Islam, a side as familiar as Christianity - what I mean is, her religion never comes across as weird, scary, alien etc. The similarities between Islam and Christianity come through clearly. I also liked the "truer" understanding of jihad, as an inner struggle with the flaws of your own nature, not with another person, country or culture.It is the way this book is written, and Lilly's voice, that make it strangely warm and comforting, as well as humorous (at times), philosophical, world-weary, honest, enlightening, touching. It is such a human story, and I especially find it interesting that it closely follows the lives of women - in Africa and the refugees crowded into the council estate flats in London. It is through the daily lives of women, who worked and cooked and sang and found husbands for their children and kept the old traditions alive, that the city of Harar really comes alive.There is also insight into the world of refugees and the communities they establish in other parts of the world. While the author confesses she took some liberties with geography and history, still this book fleshed out a country and a people who were only ever, in my mind, images of black skeletons staggering through a desert, thanks to the News. Despite the uglier moments, the uglier side to their world and way of life, the characters were so well drawn that I felt like I knew them personally. I think that this quality, above anything else, is what makes this a "comfort read" for me. I could easily read this many more times, and get more out of it each time.
Sweetness in the Belly is the moving and heart-warming story of Lilly Abdal. Told in her own words, it adds to it a special liveliness, directness and authenticity. Camilla Gibb has succeeded in creating a rich and detailed account of the life of a young woman caught between cultures and identities. It is also a love story at different levels. Her narrative alternates between periods during the four dramatic years in Ethiopia and those during ten years in London, after leaving Ethiopia in 1974, at the end of Emperor Haile Selassi's reign. Gibb's novel is fast moving and particularly compelling in its portrayal of Lilly's life in the holy city of Harar. At the same time, she is conveying in-depth insights into the respective realities there and in England and establishes the religious and cultural context that surround the heroine with great subtlety and credibility. Alternating with accounts of her time in Harar, as she grows into an adult (1970-1974), Lilly narrates her life in London, beginning fifteen years after leaving Ethiopia. Now working as a nurse and living in a poor housing estate, she remains an outsider who does not fit into British reality. Committed to preserve her religion and her Ethiopian culture, she befriends Amina, her Ethiopian refugee neighbour and creates an oasis of "home" around them. While Amina and her family adjust more and more to the western lifestyle, Lilly clings to the memories of her previous life and the people in it. But developments force her to reassess and look into the future rather than hanging on to the past. Will she be able to do it?Gibb's rendering of the East African refugee scene is as realistic as her portrayal of conditions in Harar. Her novel is grounded and enriched by her thorough research and personal experiences with the cultures and the places she evokes. Ethiopians went through famine and deprivations during the early 1907s, a time that ended in the uprising against and eventual removal of the Emperor. Gibb brings this context into the novel without overburdening the reader. She finds a convincing balance between the personal and the general keeping the book a page turner from beginning to end
What do You think about Sweetness In The Belly (2007)?
The language is beautiful, the descriptions of the culture and landscape are intense, even her depiction of the main character's feelings in memorizing the Qur'an is, to me, a Muslim, a mind opener. But...The Islam in her book is not the real Islamic teaching. It's heavily mixed with cultural traditions, but still labeled 'Islam'. I can imagine the readers say "Oh, now I know more about Islam' but are actually misled. True, it's not Miss Gibbs responsiblity (why would you learn about a religion from someone who is not a believer again?), but with all the precise details she showed of the traditions and habits, one might assume that she had done a lot of research about Islam and that her portrayal of Islam is valid. So all those mistaken information has left me dissatisfied. I also have a problem with her message. To conclude that a person can only be a 'good person' if she/he becomes more permissive, leaving the code of law now and again, may be what many readers want, but is not prudent. Everyone in her story either becomes inhumane from or shackled with the religion (Islam), or they leave Islam and be humane again. Perhaps she's yet to meet a person who is kind, compassionate, and successful BECAUSE he/she is a Muslim. Or perhaps she has never read the stories of the Prophet (who is the kindest, the most compassionate ever, and very, very successful). Or simply because she meant to discredit Islam. God knows best.
—Destinia
Fictional tale of an Engish born girl whose hippie parents take her to Morocco. Upon their death there, she is taken in, cared for, and educated by a Muslim Imam. With impending political and religeous upheaval, he sends her to Ethopia (around the age of 10). As a white, female muslim, Lilly faces discrimination, but is eventually accepted. She works hard and falls in love just as the revolution of 1974 begins. She is forced to flee to Enland where she spends years searching for her lost love and figuring out who she is as a muslim, an immigrant and as a woman.
—Diane
British born, Canadian raised writer Camilla Gibb’s stunning new novel Sweetness in the Belly divided my book club. I was among those who loved it. The book tells the story of Lilly, born to hippie parents and brought up, after their death, in the city of Harar as a Muslim. Her story is told by layering her young years in a politically charged Ethiopia with her life as a nurse in London. It’s a fascinating picture of a world torn apart by poverty and prejudice and by Lilly’s own beliefs. It is also a love story as we wait with Lilly to learn the fate of her lover, Aziz.I know nothing of the politics of Ethiopia under Emperor Haile Selassie. I know very little about the Muslim religion, but Gibb’s beautiful prose and attention to detail (she conducted fieldwork in Ethiopia for her PhD in social anthropology) makes this book a page-turner. The characters are complex and interesting and the day to day struggles of the women, in particular, are riveting. I was both gutted and elated by book’s end.
—Christie
