Sweetness in the Belly

by Camilla Gibb

  I shook my head lamely.

  “There’s nothing I should be apologizing for?” he asked.

  “No, it’s my fault,” I said.

  “How so?” he asked gently, leaning in.

  “I’m rather shy,” I said, though that wasn’t quite it. “Slow to get to know.”

  “Slow is good,” he said. “It brings out the full strength of the flavors.”

  I didn’t know where to look. I opted for the name tag on his chest.

  “Listen.” He cleared his throat. “I’d better get on with my rounds, but I wanted to ask you—there’s a lecture series I attend once a month at the London School of Tropical Hygiene and Medicine. Next week they have an Anglo-Egyptian team presenting some of their findings on Nile parasites. Epidemic in Egypt. I just wondered whether you might have any interest.”

  “I wonder if they affect the Sudan and Ethiopia as well,” I said.

  “Good question. Perhaps you can ask.”

  Amina is painting her flat—an expense, an extravagance; no one else in the building would bother. My flat has not been painted in all the years I’ve lived here. I’ve not even hung a picture. But Amina is a mother; she knows how to make a home. She buys a new rug and a framed poster of lion cubs and whacks a nail into a freshly painted white wall.

  Her housekeeping extends to our office, an impossibly crowded room at the best of times. She’s all about reorganization and increased productivity—terms borrowed from her work with the government-funded Refugee Referral Service—but our office has an internal logic, one governed by heart. We prioritize the things that move us, we fall behind on bookkeeping and other administrative tasks, we do not pride ourselves on efficiency. Imagine telling one of our visitors: your tears are not productive; this is a waste of resources; your search is a hopeless case. We offer something no other organization does: familiarity, affection and a good strong cup of buna, and if a story takes eight hours to tell? It takes eight hours to tell.

  “If we were a registered charity, perhaps someone would donate a computer,” Amina says, transferring files from one drawer to another.

  I think headache. I think lawyers and accountants. And the miles of data entry. “We’d need a secretary then.”

  “Yes,” Amina says with a nod, slamming a drawer shut.

  “But we can’t afford a secretary.”

  “But if we are a proper charity—” She stops herself, sees me shaking my head. “Lilly, every organization must grow and change. Move with the times, no?”

  Robin and I sit side by side in the dark, staring at the road ahead as we drive back to Lambeth. The lecture was even more compelling than I’d imagined. I’d heard of bilharziasis, knew it vaguely as a disease caused by parasites, but not the grisly details: nasty, madly copulating worms laying hundreds of spiny eggs a day, eggs that wander the dark corridors of the intestines, bladder, kidneys, lungs, tearing tracks through the body, feasting on red blood cells, causing anemia, infection and disease. There is a treatment, though it’s expensive and hardly available in Africa, where this is the most devastating parasitic disease after malaria. I think of a hundred children I once knew who were probably suffering from internal bleeding without any of us realizing it. Who are probably still suffering.

  The Egyptian doctors are trying to work on a vaccine, but a major hurdle lies in how to isolate these parasites when they dress themselves in the host’s cells. Camouflage warfare.

  Robin must have sensed that I didn’t have the courage to put up my hand in that audience—men, mainly doctors with white hair—because the last question of the evening was mine coming from his mouth. About the Blue and White Niles. He remembers everything, it seems.

  Our mood is sober as we talk about cutbacks to the NHS, and how the hospital is responding to the increase in HIV-related infections. I tell him about the work Amina and I do on Saturdays, the refugees we encounter, my certainty that if there is no anonymous HIV testing you’ll never have people like this taking the test.

  He understands my concerns, sees a real argument, but I feel I’m talking far too much, giving up a layer of skin.

  “How did you become interested in medicine in the first place?” he asks as he pulls up to the curb.

  “Long story,” I reply. “For another time. I should get home now, anyway,” I say, reaching for the door handle.

  Robin laughs. “I only stopped here because you haven’t told me where you live. All I know is that it’s somewhere in the vicinity of this bus stop.”

  I hesitate.

  “Can I at least drive you to your door?” he asks.

  “Thank you, but I can walk from here.”

  “Okay. Well, thank you for coming with me.”

  “Thank you. It was extremely informative,” I say, retreating to workplace formality.

  part four

  harar, ethiopia

  1972-1974

  the emperor

  Moments of solitude were rare in a city like Harar, privacy an incomprehensible notion. Even sick, where the farenji way was to cocoon you in quiet and dark, the Harari way was to entertain you with music and song, never leave your side, for there was always the fear that you might have been possessed by the zar, the darkest of the jinn spirits.

  Berchas offered a compromise: a way of being alone in the company of others, solitude sanctioned and contained by witness, but in a city so overflowing with people and animals and their noise, needs and waste, transcendence was required, and for that, qat was the key.

  I came, through sheer persistence, to find its hidden pleasure. I discovered how to grind the leaves to a pulp between my teeth and patiently extract their gentle power, to rise like a balloon and float in a slow, dull sky. People said it aided concentration, freed the mind from the cumbersome body, helping one persist through the monotony of prayer on Thursday nights, helping students pass their exams. It seemed to take me through a cloud and down a rabbit hole where I was a child and two people named Alice and Philip dressed up in funny costumes and spoke in riddles for my amusement and theirs. I visited their world, and if ever I was disoriented, they simply pointed me in the direction of up. I rather liked being able to visit but I wouldn’t have wanted to live there. I was different from them. It was here that I belonged: in this dark room alive with conversation, at Aziz’s side, feeling the heat radiating from his skin, feeling my own temperature rise.

  I looked forward to Saturdays with an eagerness I did my best to conceal from Nouria. I brushed my teeth with a stick whittled from the wood of a special tree, the bark of which tasted like licorice. I rubbed used cooking oil into the soles of my feet in the dark of the kitchen at night.

  I made my way to Aziz’s uncle’s house alone now, slipping out one gate and back through the next, first stopping at the market to buy qat. I’d learned how to choose the best leaves and bargain the sellers down. This looks like yesterday’s qat. Are you trying to swindle me because I am a farenji? Don’t you think I can tell the difference? I would not even give you one birr for qat with such rough edges. Or another tack: Oh, Mouna, that is such a pretty dress you’re wearing. You must have had to sell a lot of qat to purchase such beautiful cloth. You are so hardworking, and so generous, your co-wives are so lucky they have you among them. And your daughter, my, she looks just like you, she is so lucky to have you for a mother, to inherit such beauty, no doubt you will have such a difficult time choosing between all her suitors. Oh, you are so sweet, you saved this bundle of young leaves just for me? But I’m afraid I have only one birr with me today. It could take half an hour.

  Exchanging greetings with Aziz’s uncle could take another half an hour. He would greet me in Arabic, wishing me an afternoon full of light, and I would wish him an afternoon full of cream. He would greet me in Harari, asking if I had peace, then greet me in Oromiffa, Somali and occasionally Amharic. It amused us both. Invariably I stammered. Unlike the Hararis, I didn’t seem to have the capacity for more languages. They switched between them as easily as
if they were changing veils. My inability to do so seemed to be the thing that amused Aziz’s uncle most of all.

  There was always much discussion about the events of the week at these berchas, discussions in which I began to engage more fully as I learned more about the secular world that concerned them. I brought a notebook with me to record new words. The men often talked about the world beyond our walls, a world that seemed so unsettled in comparison to the peace and order of life in our city. One week it was Palestine, the next, Algeria or Uganda.

  Tajuddin was stripping qat leaves off their stalks as fast as a goat when he told us that the Ugandan president, Idi Amin, had announced the expulsion of all the Asians in the country.

  “But how can he do that?” I asked.

  “The Asians control the marketplace,” Aziz said. “They have most of the wealth in Uganda.”

  “A dictator can do anything he wants,” added Munir.

  “He’ll destroy the economy,” Tajuddin said, shaking his head.

  “Haile Selassie is apparently very angry about it,” said Aziz.

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “It’s part of Idi Amin’s efforts to strengthen ties with certain Arab countries,” he replied.

  “Haile Selassie feels lonely,” Munir said. “We have Muslims in the north—in Egypt and in Eritrea—and in Djibouti and Somalia, and on the other side, in the Sudan, so, you see, he feels Ethiopia is this small island of Christianity floating in this Muslim sea.”

  “But his own mother was a Muslim,” I said. In fact, I remembered the man who had driven Hussein and me to Harar from the capital telling me that the emperor’s mother was a Muslim from Harar. The emperor loves Harar, the driver had said, describing it as a place where Muslims and Christians are locked together in an embrace.

  Munir raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Well,” he said, clearing his throat, “his mother died when he was small. And besides, it doesn’t matter who your mother was, it matters only who your father was, and his father was Ras Makonnen, the last emperor. No father could matter more among the Christians.”

  When mirqana had descended, Aziz rose, and at the push of a button the white dot exploded to reveal a familiar picture. The emperor’s convoy approached the palace. A thousand people prostrated themselves before the gates in anticipation of the arrival of the King of Kings.

  The golden gates only hinted at the extraordinary wealth beyond. The north wing, where Hussein and I had spent a week, boasted a series of rooms off a long corridor of speckled marble, closed off from the rest of the palace by a set of double doors the height of trees. Hussein had cowered behind me, peeking over my shoulder while I opened the first of those doors along the corridor.

  Gilt-edged mirrors and ornate furniture painted white and gold filled the rooms.

  “Look at this,” I remember marveling as I ran a finger over the silk bedspread in the master bedroom. “Have you ever seen anything like it, Hussein?”

  “The Gardens of Eternity,” he said dreamily. “ ‘The righteous shall be adorned therein with bracelets of gold and pearls; and their garments there will be of silk.’ ”

  “ ‘They will recline therein on raised thrones,’ ” I quoted in reply.

  I left Hussein and explored what lay behind the rest of the closed doors. When I reached the drawing room I threw open the shutters to let in the glow of the late-afternoon sun. I stared out the window at a pond where pink flamingos were being pink flamingos—perched on single legs, pecking at fleas under their wings.

  Miriam, the woman the palace secretary had assigned to look after us, entered the room then, carrying a wide tray.

  “Buna,” she said firmly, placing the tray on the table.

  “Buna,” I said in reply, thinking it must mean hello in Amharic.

  Miriam lifted the white cloth to reveal tiny white coffee cups and a black clay coffee pot.

  “Buna,” she said again, pointing at the tray, and then went over to the window to close the shutters. “No good,” she said, shaking her head.

  “But it is good,” I protested, opening the shutters again.

  Miriam put her hands on her hips and sighed. She left the room, returning a few minutes later with a small hibachi full of coals. I watched as she kneeled on the floor and shook a large flat pan of green coffee beans over the heat. They spat and smoldered as they browned, and the stream of rich smoke enticed Hussein into the room.

  Miriam scraped the beans off the pan into a mortar and began to grind them with a wooden pestle. She threw in a cardamom pod, and when she’d ground it all into a rich black dust, she lifted it by the spoonful and slid it delicately down the narrow neck of the clay coffee pot.

  We kneeled on cushions Miriam had placed on the floor, and she handed us each a cup. I glared at Hussein, afraid he was about to refuse. Miriam offered us popcorn to accompany the coffee, producing it magically from inside her skirt. It was a strange combination, but I, who had not seen popcorn since attending a fair in southern France with my parents a lifetime ago, grabbed white kernels by the fistful.

  We drank three small cups and then she rearranged everything neatly on the tray and carried it away. We sat in silence, unsure of what we should be doing. But Miriam returned immediately and drew a bath. She asked for our laundry as well. I dumped out the contents of my rucksack and handed over every one of my few articles of clothing. Miriam looked for more—suitcases, valises, hatboxes and trunks, the luggage of previous farenjis.

  We sat down to dinner, just Hussein and I, at a table covered in white cloth laid with silver knives and forks, salt and pepper shakers, wine glasses and silver serving dishes under gleaming silver lids. Hussein flinched at the display on the table. The desert had made us so serious, placed us under so much strain. I gladly relished the pleasures we were being offered, while Hussein seemed determined to remain joyless.

  “Could you at least remove that,” he said, pointing at the bottle of wine.

  I set the offending object on the floor.

  “Bismillah,” said Hussein, reluctantly lifting the alien fork and knife to sample the feast before us: quail swimming in sweet juices flavored with onions and apples and walnuts, accompanied by some soft green vegetable soaked in garlic and oil. And under the third silver lid, a mountain of chips, cut by hand into long thin strips, glistening with oil and salt. It was the best meal I’d ever eaten.

  Here in a dark storage room, perched above a congested city where disease moves far more freely and easily than people, it was difficult to believe I was in the same country. That this was the city where the emperor was born.

  “The drama is about to begin,” Aziz said. He reached for my hand and began outlining the plot of the show in whispers. “This man is devoted to serving the emperor, and you see this woman? His wife? She has some scheme with her husband’s brother to steal a small medallion that the emperor gave her husband in recognition of his service.”

  I couldn’t distinguish between the episodes from week to week. There were always schemers, usually women, trying to sabotage a loyal servant of the emperor. The schemers always came to ruin in the end, and while a man might have lost his wife, his children, his brothers, his limbs, he never lost his loyalty, and for that he was ultimately rewarded.

  The music of the finale blared and the picture sizzled to a stop. Aziz did not let go of my hand even though the others were standing up, brushing qat debris off their clothes as they commented on the story’s predictable end.

  He leaned close to my ear. “Stay,” he whispered before standing up to say good-bye to his friends. I sat in the corner of the humid room, examining the henna on my nails, and muttered “Masalaama” to each one of the group.

  “See you next Saturday,” they each said.

  Aziz closed the door, shutting us back into a room smelling of incense and sweat.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, adjusting his sarong at the waist and sitting down.

  “I should leave, Aziz. It is too haram.”
>
  “You are a very good Muslim,” he said. “I admire this about you.”

  “Even if you don’t agree with the importance I place on it.”

  “It’s not a question of whether I agree or not. I think what I admire is the inner strength this conviction gives you. This is not an easy place for an outsider, but you have this certainty about you, because of your faith, perhaps, and it has allowed you to fight for a place here.”

  “It’s the only certainty I have.”

  “I don’t even have that,” he said, taking both my hands in his. “My point is only that I don’t want you to lose your place.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You are earning a good reputation as a teacher,” he said. “You need to be more careful. You’ve worked hard to earn the community’s respect. You don’t need the rumors to start again.”

  He was right: I shouldn’t come here anymore. It was far too risky. The women would call me a sharmuta, withdraw their children from my class, banish and condemn me to hell if they had any idea of my flirtation with the devil on Saturdays, of the daydreams that polluted an otherwise pious life.

  “It is best if you don’t suggest any familiarity with the emperor,” he continued.

  “What does the emperor have to do with it?”

  “This fact of his mother being a Muslim.”

  “But doesn’t everybody know that?”

  “Maybe, but still, it invites curiosity to speak of him with any familiarity. Do you know this English expression, ‘the walls have ears’?”

  I didn’t. All I knew was that God sees everything. God saw this: Aziz bowing his head and kissing my right hand in that fleshy triangle where thumb meets forefinger. The way a pilgrim kisses the hand of a disciple. “It is not religious transgression you have to worry about,” he said, “it is political.”

  the inner sanctum

  It was my determination that made my reputation as a good teacher, but there were limits to what I could accomplish with one Qur’an, my Qur’an with its faded green leather cover, leaving gold dust on all who touched it. When one group of students had memorized a chapter by repeating line by line, verse by verse, I took the book in my hands and read them the entirety of the next chapter before we began again, line by line, giving song to each word.