She could not believe that so much had happened in so short a time. But Saleem’s blue-black eyes attested to her existence and the fact that she was not dreaming. When he disappeared into the adjoining room, things around her would lose existence and reality. When he returned and their eyes met, a strange feeling of the truth of things and of existence coursed through her body. Then she realized that this moment was her real age, that all past days and years were no more than dream or illusion. Her mouth felt the true taste of life: hot and biting, mixed with the penetrating smell of ether and iodine. A noticeable shiver ran down her ribs, her hand trembled when she touched anything and her legs shook when she stood or walked: it was the tremor of real life, a mixture of fear and bravery, a sense of both danger and safety, a loss of time and place and yet the acquisition of a remarkable ability to experience them both. It was a heady mixture of contradictory feelings, melting in complete harmony like the colours of a rainbow.
