The Sea

"And slowly, as I grew older and raised my eyes from the sand and beyond the conventional weekend pleasures...I heard a new voice speaking to me, not in any language I had ever learned, but in the secret language of my heart.

It was the sea. Its come-hither murmur, its seductive roar. That was the music that could wash my soul. The lure of a different element, its promises of elsewhere, gave me my first intimation of something hidden within me that would pull me across the water, leaving my parents stranded. The sea, the wine-dark, the fish-rich. The lap and suck of waves dying on sand. Rumours of mermaids. Touch the sea and at once you're joined to its farthest shore, to Araby...Suez...and Europa beyond. Perhaps even- I remember the thrill of the whispered word on my young lips- America. America, the open-sesame. America, which got rid of the British long before we did....My dream-ocean led to America, my private, my unfound land."

- Salman Rushdie, The Ground Beneath Her Feet