Prologue : no small war -- Mercenaries, contractors and other hired guns -- Nepalis at war -- One blast, many lives -- Costs and compensation -- Manpower -- Two hundred years of Gurkhas -- "Who will be a Gurkha?" -- Through the colonial looking glass -- The labor of war -- A protective government? -- Of roses and revolutions -- Economic Ottomans -- Turkish engineers and other heroes of the intervention -- Building an empire? -- Detained -- Kidnapped -- Hom Bahadur -- The boredom of being trafficked -- Accountants at war -- Classes and gender at war -- Returning abroad -- When you can't go home -- Where the war went.