Where can you buy 913 Kalashnikovs? How do you tell a friend her expat love is never coming back? What`s it like to date a mercenary? In 2007, Canadian journalist Heidi Kingstone arrived in Kabul, eager to uncover the mysteries & shadows of one turbulent corner of the world. Over the next four years, she encountered idealists & chancers, gunrunners & warlords. She interviewed generals & partied with powerbrokers & fashionistas. A passionate advocate for women`s rights, she witnessed women as heroes, as victims, as freeloaders, as rivals. Heidi`s account of the last years of ISAF-controlled Kabul is vividly atmospheric, deeply personal & at times shockingly painful. From air bases to brothels, she tells of disastrous development programs & hopeful couplings against the backdrop of our longest war. But as her friends fall victim to ambush, kidnap & suicide bombing, no amount of booze & adrenalin can soften the devastating realities of NATO`s new Afghanistan. ” This wonderful cocktail of images & impressions is far more than the sum of its parts. For it offers a deep draught of the awful excitement of living on the edge of somebody else`s war. An experience that no Westerner in Afghanistan would want to have missed, or to repeat.” Sherard Cowper-Coles, former British ambassador to Afghanistan. ” Heidi is sharp, funny, utterly irreverent, often poignant & always entertaining” Kate Fox, author of Watching the English