in his youth , he had wanted nothing more than to leave his hometown of bahlia , to see the world and to find his place ; now , he understood that , in doing so , he had given himself over to endless wanderings , a life of migration from life-to-life , albeit not necessarily a set of migrations one must view as physical , but rather a set of migrations between circumstances , a set of migrations where the players surrounding him were just as likely to move as he , but nonetheless , a set of migrations calling forth a life unalterable only by its lack of permanence .