By Leslie Scrivener | Toronto Star

When the writer is Camilla Gibb and the subject is an Ethiopian doctor who inspired the character with “butter-soft dark skin and bright teeth” in her bestseller, the outcome might be the education of a generation of medical students

Here is the fiction:

“He was different, this man, this Dr. Aziz. He made me feel different: stirred, compelled, vaguely anxious.” With this, Gibb, in her novel Sweetness in the Belly, introduces the erudite and idealistic Dr. Aziz Abdulnasser.

Aziz falls in love with Lilly, a white Muslim woman who lives in the gorgeous decrepitude of Harar, the ancient walled city in Ethiopia. As their love deepens, they are caught in the 1974 overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie. Aziz disappears and Lilly flees to London, where she becomes a nurse, lives with Ethiopian refugees, and pines for the handsome doctor.

Here is the reality:

Gibb, who has roots in London and Toronto, did live in Harar in 1994 and 1995, researching her PhD dissertation on religious practices in Islam. Troubled by an intestinal disorder, she paid one birr (about 14 cents) to be treated at the local hospital.

While there, Gibb, then 25, met a tall, “über-educated,” English-speaking young doctor named Abdulaziz Sherif. They share books – Jane Austen, Dostoevsky – meet in berchas, Saturday gatherings where Ethiopians chew khat (a plant used as a stimulant) and discuss the issues of the day.

“There was a level of comprehension, a whole new level of conversation,” Gibb says. “I could be so much more myself.”

Gibb and Sherif have not publicly discussed their literary and real-life connection, and it’s taken an ambitious project to get them to break that silence. Citing a link between literature and medicine, and Ethiopia and Canada, they want to talk about an academic exchange between the University of Toronto and the University of Addis Ababa spurred in part by Gibb’s book.

It seemed natural to expand a collaboration that had been so effective in psychiatry. Under that program, in which University of Toronto academics volunteered to teach in Ethiopia for a month three times a year, the number of psychiatrists grew from nine to 34.

The new proposal would broaden the program to 10 disciplines, including medicine, nursing, pharmacy and library sciences.

“That would likely not have happened without (Gibb’s) book,” says Dr. Eugenia Piliotis, haematology program director at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.

With 1,800 doctors and perhaps 200 specialists for a population of 80 million, Ethiopia has the highest brain drain of doctors in Africa. According to a report by Dr. Clare Pain, a Mount Sinai psychiatrist, some 80 per cent of Ethiopian doctors trained abroad don’t return.

It was Gibb, now 41, who suggested that Pain – who had launched the successful U of T supplemental training program for residents in psychiatry at Addis Ababa University in 2003 – meet Sherif and “start a conversation.”

Sherif himself underscores the need for an academic exchange. Though he is one of Ethiopia’s two haematologists (Toronto has about 70), he has had no formal training in the field. “Perhaps my biggest exposure is the time I’ve spent here.”

Which brings us back to the crossroads of fiction and reality. The two recently met for the first time in 15 years in Toronto, where Sherif is a visiting observer in haematology at Sunnybrook.

Gibb is now a celebrated author. Sweetness in the Belly has been translated into eight languages, won the Trillium Book Award and was a finalist for the Giller Prize. Sherif is an assistant professor at Addis Ababa University and will return to Ethiopia this month. His deeply rooted reserve remains. “Some may not even know I am in the room,” he says.

What happens, we wondered, when someone unaccustomed to public attention finds himself not only a character but also a love interest in a novel? “I saw myself in part of it, yes, but I am kind of shy and low profile and not as outspoken as that guy,” Sherif says. “But compassion, and so on, I think I am kind of like that.”

Now 38, he has close-cropped hair, a moustache and the smooth skin and white teeth of his fictional counterpart. Physical resemblance aside, “This is a fiction,” he says. “Somebody should talk about the character in the book, not me.”

Gibb steps in: “People make the assumption that I’m Lilly. They completely conflate the characters to the extent that I have been at lunch with people who ask if I’m a nurse in London… It’s fiction that takes its inspiration from a real place and real people.”

One of the topics that Gibb and Sherif have never discussed is the fact that the novel includes a sex scene, nor has Sherif discussed his similarity to the Sweetness character with his wife. He doesn’t even know if she has read the book.

As for being asked if the friends ever had a more intimate relationship, the question simply wouldn’t come up in Ethiopia, says Sherif.

“Our community in Harar is very closed and everybody knows everybody,” he explains. “The book has not circulated in the country, so I didn’t have to make explanations.”