The following text is adapted from Mohsin Hamid’s 2017 novel Exit West. Saeed lives with his mother and father. On cloudless nights after a daytime rain, Saeed’s father would sometimes bring out the telescope, and the family would sip green tea on their balcony, enjoying a breeze, and take turns to look up at objects whose light, often, had been emitted before any of these three viewers had been born—light from other centuries, only now reaching Earth. ©2017 by Mohsin Hamid