I Was an Elephant Salesman: Adventures between Dakar, Paris, and Milan

Introduction by Graziella Parati

vi Pap Khouma A Senegalese Lunch 68 A Dresser in Piacenza 72 The End of Ma 79 Milanese Chronicles 85 A Run on the Beach 92 Dakar via Moscow 98 Life in Senegal 102 A Tourist in Rome 106 To Catch a Thief 109 Lacoste 115 Fights in the Metro 119 Changes 124 Political Accusations 129 Children 135 contents I Was an Elephant Salesman vii t r a n s l at o r ' s p r e fa c e Rebecca Hopkins In Italian the terms traduttore (“translator”) and traditore (“traitor”) are remarkably similar. Perhaps of all the ways in which a translator inevitably “betrays” the original work, it is the act of translating the title that often proves the thorniest. In translating the title the translator faces the daunting task of trying to preserve the part of the work that is most closely linked to the work’s core identity—at least in the eyes of the readers. The title serves as the first point of contact between readers and the work, thus establishing an inextricable link between the texture and form of the original language and the emotional memory of the reading experience. Often it is the appeal of a highly peculiar or poetic title that originally leads a reader to become enamored with the work—a linguistic love affair that is thereafter reinforced by the familiar interplay of syllables, syntax, and metaphor, which in turn become terms of endearment of sorts. This is certainly the case with Pap Khouma’s I Was an Elephant Salesman: Adventures between Dakar, Paris, and Milan, whose original Italian title, Io, venditore di elefanti. Una vita per forza fra Dakar, Parigi e Milano, has undoubtedly become a term of endearment in its own right, a title almost as beloved to readers of Italian as the book itself. The boldness of the Italian title’s use of the first person (“Io, venditore”)—while a fairly common structure for book titles in Italian—immediately captures our attention as it alerts us quite dramati- viii Pap Khouma cally to the earnest attempt of the narrator to forge some degree of individuality in a world that would at times unjustly bereave him of such aspirations. Yet it is this endearing quality of the Italian that gives the translator cause for concern. The title reminds us that the experience of being “renamed” in another language—of having one’s name misspelled or, worse, mistranslated—constitutes an inexorable part of the overarching difficulties of migration. This problem becomes apparent in the story when the Italian police misspell the narrator’s name on their arrest report, just as it does when the narrator must resort to adopting a “battle name” to protect himself on the Italian streets and beaches, and finally in the numerous times when the narrator is erroneously “renamed ” marocchino or “Moroccan,” a highly anonymous and derogatory term that marks his inauspicious baptism in his new host country and language. Given this unfavorable link between renaming, or misnaming, and migration, I considered it important to avoid “renaming” the book itself beyond recognition. For this reason I chose to retain the use of first person in the English translation, albeit changing it to the more common English syntactical form “I was,” which has the added benefit of capturing the simple, forthright quality of the original Italian. The second key element of the title that seemed important to retain in the English translation was the ingenious play on words evoked by the phrase venditore di elefanti. The book’s title most certainly owes part of its popularity to this beguiling term, whose simplicity belies a sophisticated critique of the colonial legacy in the context of immigration in contemporary Italy. In Italian the term venditore di elefanti might initially be misconstrued as a person who sells actual elephants. It is only upon closer perusal of the Italian cover and the first page of the story that we see that in actuality this phrase refers to what in Italian would be more commonly called a venditore ambulante, a term commonly used to refer to African street vendors who sell little elephant figurines , lighters, and T-shirts on the beaches and streets of Italy. The confusion of the title deliberately appeals to the Western fascination with an exotic Africa, one associated with wild translator's preface I Was an Elephant Salesman ix animals and safaris, big game hunting, and...