COULDN'T I CALL YOU ANNA?

I want to talk about my name.

My name comes from my parents' culture. It has a religious, ethnic meaning.

My name carries with it the history of my family, it binds me to my origins and to an ancestral repetition, to the life of women I have not known but who forged my family tree, to the illustrious namesake who illuminates us all with the his path of struggle and spirituality.

My name has no gender connotation in Western terms.

My name does not resemble to anyone else around me in Italy.

In Italian it is related to a verb that opens doors, opens people, opens arms.

Asking to enter.

It took me a lifetime to love it.

In front of its sound, in front of my face, people laughed, made faces annoyed by something so strange, so different, so out of the ordinary.

“Couldn't I call you Anna?” 

This is the question I've been asked more than once.

Couldn't you have a pronounceable name, less difficult, less exotic.

More European, whiter?

More ours.

Couldn't I call you Fatou?

It is a name we know, which we have adopted.

You are all called that, we recognize you in this sound.

It suits you, we accept it.

For years I have denied my name.

Outside a very close circle and at work, I was known to everyone by a nickname, made up, two syllables, a sound so general that any person could recognize themselves.

Bibi.

In French, my nickname literally means "anyone".

For years I have been anyone.

My name has become a stanger entity, strange in the mouth of others, the shadow of a different life in which I was a little girl and I could do nothing against the comments of others.

When I first met someone, I would give my middle name, Diara or my nickname.

They were sweet, easy sounds.

I said immediately, eyes rolling "my real name is very difficult to pronounce".

There are people I love that have known me for years that don't know my real name.

I created a person, a story, a life with this nickname.

The words of my youth have stayed so anchored within me that I ended up denying it.

That name is difficult and difficult is the life of the person who bears it.

That name is something people can make fun of, is strange faces, scornful sounds, a little girl being scolded by parents.

I canceled myself.

And I know I'm not alone.

That sentence, that look, those comments, keep them to yourself.

Don't ask a little girl or boy to justify themselves for their very identity.

Do not put anyone in a position to feel uncomfortable in the face of what is our most intimate feature.

Your name is also foreign and strange somewhere else.

My name is my identity.

Bousso. Mame Diara Bousso. 

Say it, read it, make the effort, learn it.

Acknowledge me.

Respect me.