I did not read about the fall of the Soviet Union. I watched it from a sidewalk in Tbilisi, close enough to hear the rounds go by.

In the winter of 1991 and into 1992, my classmates and I walked from our lectures to Rustaveli Avenue, where Georgia’s first democratically elected president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, was barricaded inside the Parliament while Tengiz Kitovani’s forces shelled it from the street. We watched a civil war the way other students watch films — live, daily, from 50 meters away. Then, one afternoon, a stray round found one of my classmates. He was not a soldier. He was a spectator, like us. We came back the next day anyway because that is what a dying state trains you to do: Treat the impossible as ordinary. Collapse is not a headline. It is a normal Tuesday with gunfire in it.