The Curious Road to Ithaca

By Sjors Sommer

Life is great. We're born into this lovely world and are endowed with seemingly unlimited opportunities. We can do what we want - become what we want, but what do we do when the time has come to make the decision? Join the enthralling journey of someone who accepts the adventure and leaves his safe-haven in search of purpose.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sjors Sommer
• Release date: May 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370792108

Book preview

cover-image, The Curious Road to Ithaca



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Chapter 1

G O

The sinking sun lit the Oasis and set fire to the tangerine sky. Far out on the horizon, something was stirring in the blurry haze. Or maybe it was my imagination. My hope, no, my wish, of seeing something out there. There, at the very brink of my perception. Then I looked aside and our eyes met. Hers obsidian dark, brightly and anxiously glimmering, yet troubled, as if she was scared of the thing she just had said. Scared of her own sweet soft lips. Mine, confused and forlorn. Pinched by imminent fate and the sun setting on the place we had known together for all those years. The dreams we had shared. The dreams, concealed in the future, now sealing our fate. My fate.

Again she lipped that horrible word while shaking her head in sadness. I tried to divert my eyes, but found myself glued to her unsettled gaze. The syllable echoed on to infinity. Those two ghastly letters which ripped my entire world apart, scattered the bits and pieces over the Plain, to faraway places, carried by the abiding wind, taken to a remote and unknown world, just as I was about to be taken. For I knew that was bound to happen. That word, resembling an inevitable necessity long postponed. An action so wild and rash that I never had thought of actually pursuing.

To leave the Oasis was what we both dreamt of, although I have to admit, for me it seemed to be a more pressing matter. More dire, so to say. Thinking of her, I honestly believe she was happy to be where she was. Content with her life in the Oasis. And even though I was happy for her, I cannot deny having felt different. Not that I was unhappy, no, none of that nonsense! The Oasis was a place of abundance and I was happily living amongst the ones I loved: my parents, the girl and her father. Her mother had lived there too. That is, before she had left overnight with a passing caravan never to return. Ever since her curious departure, the five of us made up the population of this tiny green spot in the arid Kush; this lovely Oasis with its well and scattered palm trees laying in orbit; this flourishing area amidst the dead and dry plain; the place I’d known for all my life. I was happy there, but still I had to leave, for there was this urge, deep down inside. A state of profound unease.

Every now and then, I caught myself looking wishfully at the horizon, wondering what was out there. Wondering what more there was to life. Thoughts of hidden places and veiled faces, of adventure and mystery. In despair, I considered all the