 Mohammad Zahir Shah, the last king of Afghanistan, died yesterday:
The deposed king took up residence in a villa on Via Cassia, a main thoroughfare leading north out of Rome. He played chess and took walks. He was sometimes seen sitting in a café sipping a cappuccino or browsing through titles in a second-hand bookstore.
I can only imagine the baristas and bookstore clerks muttering to one another: “Psst! It’s that guy again! The one who keeps saying he’s the king of the Afghans!”