I had hardly dropped my suitcase at the Dubai guesthouse when I got the phone call. My husband and I had just enjoyed our school’s spring break in Egypt and were preparing to board our flight into Kabul the next day. It was my stepmother calling f...

I recently attended two funerals in the same week, each one for a person who not too long ago I would have considered “elderly.” The sobering thing, however, is that the deceased were parents of friends my age, forcing me to come face to face with...