She was a purebred Khmer, with that typical, unforgettable beauty. I had photographs of of her dancing, in a trance, possessed by the gods talking through her as a medium. Her feline grace made her movements ripple. The whites of her eyes were the color of ripe corn, her teeth as white as ivory; her lips framed the opening of her mouth like a red ribbon dappled with azure. Just as nature had pulled up the corners of her slanting eyelids, it had simultaneously turned up the tips of her eyebrows, the wings of her nostrils, and the corners of her mouth. Their little daughter was ravishing; like her mother's the darker area around the blurred base of her nose merged with the very top of her lip, disappearing into the contours of her mouth. ~ François Bizot, The Gate