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

The Car-House

I Was an Elephant Salesman 47 that I might avoid the sunlight waiting for me. When I get out in the open air, I find three guys I had met the night before I tried to enroll in the Foreign Legion: Falou, Mordiarra, and his little brother, As. They were all supposed to go ahead of me to Germany, but instead they’re here in their red Peugeot with Parisian plates. They pull over and tell me how they had gotten all the way to Germany only to find that the Germans wouldn’t let them sell anything. They didn’t even make it one day: deportation papers just like that. “Well, so long. We’re headed back to Italy,” they say. “Italy?” I open the door. “I’m going to Italy, too.” “Good, with four people the trip will cost us each less.” 48 Pap Khouma From Paris to Riccione I don’t waste a minute. Just thinking of Riccione gets my blood pumping, even if there are hundreds of kilometers between me and Italy, and most importantly there’s still the border to cross. Paris is too gray for me to stay any longer. It’s harsh and bitter. My friends are in a rush. I run over to Kebè’s and collect the few things I have. There are four of us from Senegal in the car. We talk loudly, eager to yell and laugh because we are finally free from the Parisian anguish and chill. It’s pandemonium. We each say what we think is the best way to exit the city. In the meantime the Porte d’Italie closes. We are still in Paris, stuck in traffic, tricked by the signs for “Italie” and trapped by our own chatter. Four idiots. We reset the departure for tomorrow. I make use of the time to call my cousin: “Cousin, I’m leaving for Italy.” He responds on the other end,”I’m glad. It would have been hard for you here. You would have ended up under the Seine bridges.” I thought so too after having seen all the dealers, drug addicts, and good Senegalese people enslaved to the bottle, sleeping on cardboard. We decide to meet up one last time to say goodbye. I see my cousin arrive. He hugs me and gives me five hundred francs. Thanks, cousin. I remember our Peugeot, abandoned next to Kebè’s house. I talk to Sal and Charl about it: “Guys, do what you want with it.” I Was an Elephant Salesman 49 We were always together in these last months. It’s a way, I guess, to pay them back for my betrayal. We had shared money and hopes for the future, the trip to Germany. We had wandered together around the markets, the stations, the bridges of the Seine, and the Parisian suburbs. So long, guys. I’m sorry, but I can’t stay here anymore. I look back out of the moving car. Paris slowly fades away. Shrouded in the exhaust fumes of an engine just barely running on a gas-oil mix, it looks small and barely visible. It’s a Thursday at the end of October. I have to make a stop in Toulon to collect my other suitcases. We travel for an entire day, the whole time on the local roads because we figure they are less patrolled by the police and so safer for us. As soon as we get on the highways, the police stop us, asking, “Where are you going? What are you doing? And what about the car? Whose car is it?” We’re not frightened. It almost has no effect on us anymore . “We’re leaving France. We’re going to visit a friend and bring him his car.” This beautiful red car with Parisian plates would be our companion for months to come, the protagonist of endless breakdowns, sales, and searches. It would introduce us to endless mechanics. But for us it’s also a home, a family, and all those other things that a Senegalese immigrant is bound to love in a red car with Parisian plates. The police let us go. The first stop is Aix-en-Provence. Our drivers, Falou and Mordiarra, stretch their legs and arms and sleep a little. Even the car takes a breath. Now that we’re awake we make plans for what’s to come since...