"But here I was now, less than fifty feet from them, telling myself that the sudden taste in my mouth wasn’t unadulterated, naked fear. Telling myself my flesh hadn’t suddenly shrunk against my bones and my heart wasn’t battering"

In this quote, Amir comes across the Taliban in person for the first time and is extremely afraid of their presence. When he tells himself that the "sudden taste in [his] mouth wasn't unadulterated, naked fear," he reveals that when he saw the Taliban he suddenly became nervous. Again, Hosseini uses the phrase that there is a sudden taste in a character's mouth to show the extent of something. Here, it shows how much he is afraid of the Taliban, and in the previous quote, it shows how much Farid wants to eat lamb meat. With the words "naked fear," it conveys the extreme fear that Amir is feeling, and it is obvious that he is feeling this way, as "naked" conveys a feeling of being bare and undisguised. Amir's fear is further described with his "battering heart" and how he feels as if he is "shrinking" due to the Taliban's strong presence.