Sweetness In The Belly: Commentary

Way to our heart
MJ Stone

Sweetness in the Belly channels the humanity we share



Over the past year or so, a number of Canadian women authors, including Shauna Singh Baldwin, Nelofer Pazira, Edeet Ravel and Camilla Gibb, have all crafted beautiful novels that speak to Western misconceptions of Islam. During a recent promo tour in Montreal, I asked Gibb what makes Islam so compelling to contemporary Canadian writers. Gibb hinted that Canadians are particularly well situated to explore Islamic culture; she spoke about the war in Iraq and how novels that explore Islam from an objective point of view are coolly received south of the border.

"We are fortunate in Canada that our publishers are more receptive to that type of fiction," she said.

We spoke at length about the year and a half she lived in Harar, Ethiopia, while working on a social anthropology Ph.D. It was during her time in the ancient city that Sweetness in the Belly crystallized. "I didn't set out to write a book about Western misconceptions of Islam," she said. "Ultimately what I wanted was to create a compelling story."

Well, Gibb managed to do both. Sweetness in the Belly tells the tale of Lilly, who finds herself orphaned as a young girl after her hippy parents die in North Africa. Raised by a Muslim cleric, she eventually finds herself in Harar where she discovers both love and self-identity. But, as Haile Selassie's Ethiopia suddenly finds itself adrift in revolution and political turmoil, Lilly's love for the zealous Dr. Aziz becomes both her beacon and her chain.

Reflecting on her life in Ethiopia from her London, England flat, she yearns for news that never comes from the man she loves, still trapped somewhere in war-torn Ethiopia.

Written in succinct prose, the novel reveals Gibb's talent for giving voice to the lives of Ethiopians faced with war, poverty and exile, and is as astonishingly beautiful as it is disturbing and thought provoking. Regarding Yusuf, the husband of Lilly's best friend Amina, Gibb writes compassionately of the renowned teacher's broken spirit after his release from prison and years of torture:

"I wonder if Yusuf will teach his children to write in Oromiffa one day, but right now he can't even tell them bedtime stories. Amina is losing patience. She tells me that the other day a car backfired in the street below and Yusuf hurled himself on the floor and tried to crawl under the sofa. The children had laughed."

A beautifully crafted novel, Sweetness in the Belly transcends the boundaries that are defined by the propaganda makers that pit Islam and the West against one another. Instead of focusing on the fear and mistrust orchestrated by those who profit the most from hatred and war, Gibb writes from the heart, revealing what is both sublime and common in every culture in the world: the yearning for love and happiness that unites us all.