“Explosions, shrapnel, indiscriminate bullets—so many expats had died over the years that I couldn’t help but picture my own end: in a restaurant garden one evening, after telling a near-death story, or in a bar, a guesthouse, any of the places foreigners sipped wine, whiskey, and cocktails, smoked pot or snorted methylphenidate—knockoff Ritalin shipped in from Iran or Pakistan, and sold without a prescription.\.”