Prologue

I

"I like your curls. Is your hair real?"

Asked the man sitting in front of me at the S Bahn. He asked me in German, but he wasn't German. I said that yes, it is real. He asked me if I curled each curl individually in the morning and I smiled and said "No," as I thought about how I haven't washed my hair in a while and that I just made something out of this bird's nest to mask my laying-in-bed-all-day winter sadness.

"Are you from Spain?"

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II

I was on my way to meet up with Anja and Christoph, a couple that works with the renewal of buildings protected by the Denkmalschutz. Anja contacted me last week because she's working on a case of a repair garage in the neighborhood of Wilmersdorf that was owned by my great-great-grandfather Moscha Farkitsch. She needed pictures of the time to prove that the building is worth saving and found me through my Ancestry.com family tree and then looked me up on Google and found my email on my website.

They invited me to visit the garage and to tell me about my family and the business.

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III

In 2017 - after spending my entire adult life in the U.S. - I was forced to confront the hard question of whether I wanted to stay in the U.S. or not. It was already difficult for a recent grad to get a visa, especially someone who studied arts. Trump wasn't about to make it any easier. So I began thinking about my relationship with the country.

I was working on a solo show that would serve as my graduating thesis from CalArts. During an emotional phone call, my grandmother Mila told me that her grandmother Ida was from the U.S., so I had some ties with the country. When I started looking up the history of my family and set up the aforementioned family tree on Ancestry.com, I found out that Ida Farchi (or Farkitsch) wasn't U.S. American: she was born in Germany, immigrated to the U.S. in 1904 when she was 19 and left when she was about 23. Seeing I was also 19 when I went to the U.S., the parallels I imagined between us started taking the shape of scenes, which eventually became the basis for my solo performance "Ithaca".

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IV

I thought "Ithaca" was about the history of my family. Of women who had to or chose to immigrate, always looking for a better life. But as these things usually go, it wasn't about that at all.

"Ithaca" was about finding home. And losing home. And not being able to recognize home. A struggle I felt my entire life and still feel today. The show ends in a question, in the in-between space of leaving a place behind and treading unknown waters ahead.

I performed "Ithaca" for the last time a month before leaving the U.S. for good. It was highly emotional and very healing. I haven't touched that material since moving to Berlin.

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V

Today is November 9th, 2019. A very special date for the city of Berlin. It marks the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 81st anniversary of the Kristallnacht. The latter, a historical event which triggered the genocide of thousands of people in Europe and the escape of my Jewish family from Berlin to Belgrade and, eventually, to Brazil. Moscha Farkitsch sold his garage and he would only buy it back after the war in the 1950's.

My curls, my nose, and my complexion don't lie. No Western Europeans think I'm "one of them." I'm not from Spain like the man in the S Bahn thought. I'm a Jew, and whether I follow the religion or not is irrelevant.

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VI

My great-great-grandfather Moscha's garage was one of the first garages and car repair services in Berlin. It was very fancy and one-of-a-kind because it had a glass roof, which protected the cars (that had no windows back then) from the rain.

Anja and Christoph told me a lot about my great-great-grandfather and his business. How he was witty and always had his way. How he was business-minded and managed to put this glass roof there, even though it was illegal. How he built apartments all throughout Berlin with modern architecture and was far ahead of his time.

"Moscha's contributions to the city of Berlin were quite important," said Anja.

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VII

Today was the first day that I felt like I had some kind of business being in Berlin. And this city is not perfect and it often makes me feel unwelcomed, but my family had a role in building it.

That must mean something...right?