“Alsana would say, ‘Little man, how about the blue one for Amma, hmm?’,
pushing him into the primary colours section of Mothercare. ‘Just one
blue one. Go so nice with your eyes. For Amma, Magid. How can you not
care for blue? It’s the colour of the sky!’
    ‘No, Amma. The sky isn’t blue. There’s just white
light. White light has all of the colours of the rainbow in it, and
when it is scattered through the squillions of molecules in the sky,
the short-wave colours—blue, violet—they are the ones you see. The sky
isn’t really blue. It just looks that way. It’s called Rayleigh
scattering.’
    A strange child with a cold intellect.”

—Zadie Smith, White Teeth, 2000.