Nuran David Calis

“I keep standing exactly where I am, I belong neither in nor out, I belong to the threshold…”

Menem is a bouncer at Café Europa. His place is the in-between – both in front of the shop and in life. Menem is torn, divided between the different cultures he has been placed in. He uses a “Life off the RACK, a language off the RACK”, nothing is tailor-made for him. The door is his crutch: here, he is needed, here everyone knows who and what he is, he can hold onto them in his rootless existence – between inside and outside.
Natascha shakes his eternal mantra of “I belong exactly here”. Natascha, the famous actress, who just lost her grip, who is in the process of coming undone herself. Menem is supposed to be her shadow-like bodyguard, free in everything – he just has to be there. Her new bond, a root. Menem stays at the door.

The thought of his parents shakes his protective self-assurance. But the memory of his homeless family is also a confirmation for the in-between being the only right place for him. Yusuf and Maria, Menem’s dead parents, are facing the same conflict: they want the established, even if it’s strange; he wants to hike to the home of his ancestors to find a treasure and discover the secret of the well.
Eva could be a calm anchor for Menem. She would stay or go with him, no matter what. It would always be a home. He only has to decide.

After Dog Eat Dog and Dogland Café Europa is the third part of the home trilogy. Dense and impressive, Calis tells of people without an internal or external home and the search for it.