Imani In The Belly

I remember a book my parents read to me when I was younger called Imani In The Belly. They read it to me before bed while we were at the beach, during the two weeks we used to spend each summer in a beach house with my Grandparents on Old Lyme Shores. I can still picture in my mind the old, pink bedroom I used to sleep in, and the knobby white glass wall light next to the bed. The book had beautiful, vividly colored illustrations, so jagged and primitive that they almost hummed or moved on the page. The story was about an African woman who is swallowed by a lion, and must find a way to escape and get back to her children. She lights a fire inside the lion's belly and the smoke makes him sneeze her right back out. Or at least I'm pretty sure that's how it goes. I also remember that at some point Imani is walking with her daughter, and her daughter begs her for a piece of orange. I didn't understand what was so special about an orange, and my mother had to explain to me that in other countries oranges were much harder to come by, that they were a special treat. I wish an orange could make me as happy as it made the little girl in that book. 

I haven't the slightest idea why this story surfaced in my memory just now, but it does every now and then, and I supposed I would note it, on this day a mere three weeks from my departure from America all the way to Paris. The familiar becomes all the more precious when we are about to leave it behind, and I would give just about anything for another two weeks in that beach house, eating fresh doughnuts and my Grandmother's scrambled eggs. Now that the visa application is no longer standing between me and France, even as excited as I am to go abrod and experience a whole other world, I'm getting a not-entirely-pleasant feeling in my stomach, and I'm starting to fear that the big, strange city might swallow me up. I begin to wonder whether I am Imani or the lion.