After ten years wandering the world, Agustinus Wibowo has finally come home. He is now forced to face a reality that he always feared. His mother is on the brink of death, as cancer ravages her body. Not unlike Scherazade who reads through one thousand and one tales over many nights, the traveller recounts his journey to his ailing mother, who has barely ever left their little villages in Java, Indonesia. He talks about the illusory homeland of China, the holy Tibet, the spiritual Nepal, the dramatic India, the struggling Pakistan, and the surviving Afghanistan. And along with these stories, his mother finally finds a voice to recount her own life journey. Fragments of their lives come together, two distinctive roads spanning time and distance only to converge, to become a heart-wrenching tale of love and survival. "Relating this travels to his dying mother, Wibowo beautifully captures this bittersweet experience of solo travel. The excitement of discovery, the shadow of a changeling identity and the low-grade thrum of the road not taken combine to produce this lyrical journey through time and place." -Elizabeth Pisani, an author of Indonesia
