When we sit at a café or in a restaurant, we pretend to be wholly focused on our food and our companions, but we spend some of our time imagining the lives of the people around us all the ti.e. Those two men holding hands a few tables over: How long have they been together? Why is the woman at that table over there crying quietly into her napkin? What will the suspiciously older man seated with her do about it? Is he her father or her lover? And the anxious woman who has been alone at the bar for a while now: What’s happening with her? Has her date stood her up? Or is that her job, to wait until some generous stranger takes interest? We do this habitually, making up stories about other people, and, at the same time, they are certainly making up stories about us. Stories of these kinds—about love and about the uncertainties between people—are the kinds of stories suggested by the portraits in Touching Strangers.

— Teju Cole, Known and Strange Things, Faber & Faber, Ch. Touching Strangers, 2016