English Language · English

As used in the text, what does the word 'reaching' most nearly mean? 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.