Sweetness in the Belly

Lilly is a stranger in her own land, the only white British citizen amongst a community of Ethiopian refugees living in council housing in Thatcher's Britain of the 1980s. A devout Muslim, Lilly keeps to herself and her work as a nurse's aide, forming neither friend nor community, until a crisis brings her together with Amina, a young Ethiopian mother. Each woman is looking for someone: Amina, her husband Yousef, and Lilly, her lover Aziz, both left behind in Ethiopia. As the women begin to form a new community around them in London, their respective searches reveal the pasts that Amina is trying to flee and Lilly is desperate to hang onto. Through their friendship, Lilly's past is gradually revealed to us, the story of a young British girl who at the age of 6 loses her bohemian parents in the dark allies of Marrakesh to a drug deal gone awry. At the age of 19, having become an observant Muslim, she travels to Harar, Ethiopia in a pilgrimage to see the birthplace of her adopted religion. There, for the first time, she finds a home and a community, and love with an Ethiopian doctor, Aziz, only to lose it all again when the fall of the monarchy tears her away from her adopted home and she finds herself exiled in England.