Any favor that Al Darir had incidentally earned with white Americans went out the window with Order Number 5, the decree banning the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages. The idea that prohibition could be made to work in what was still a war zone was farcical at best; outside the occupied capital, the ban had little effect on Americans’ drinking habits. But there were other consequences. In suddenly dry Washington, a thriving black market sprang up, giving out-of-work Minutemen a new way to make a living—and a new reason to fight for territory. The Coalition forces, meanwhile, became an army of untrained Halal agents. Troops that should have been helping to reestablish stability were instead sent on search-and-destroy missions for breweries and distilleries. Sometimes they found them. Sometimes they made mistakes and destroyed other targets instead: medical supply factories; food warehouses; schools. News of the worst outrages spread throughout the country, causing more unrest.

At an emergency meeting, some of Al Darir’s aides tried to convince him to repeal the Order. He refused. Then, making the single most regrettable statement of his career, he suggested that if Americans wanted to relax at the end of the day, they should try smoking hashish; the climate of the southern states in particular, Al Darir noted, ought to be excellent for the cultivation of cannabis.

Perhaps he was trying to make a joke. Perhaps he was being overly candid about his own habits. No one ever really knew for sure, and once the remark was leaked to the public by Al Darir’s enemies, he refused all further comment. Morally, of course, the suggestion made no sense: The Quran condemns all intoxicants, not just alcohol. But a much bigger problem was that it displayed, yet again, the administrator’s complete ignorance of American racial sensitivities.

Like cocaine and opium, cannabis had long been illegal in the CSA—not for religious reasons, but out of a belief that its consumption inflamed the lust of black men. In many white communities, Al Darir’s “let them smoke hash” comment was interpreted as an incitement to mass rape. This did not go over well.

It was only a week later that a white mob in Langley hanged the bodies of four Arab civilian contractors from a highway overpass. For Boulos al Darir’s superiors, it was the last straw; as the Marines went into Fairfax County, the administrator was recalled to Riyadh, and his pending Order Number 9, which would have outlawed pork products, was quietly shelved. But the damage had been done, and on one issue at least, white Americans and black Americans were now in total agreement: The Coalition Authority had outstayed its welcome.

Mustafa got up to stretch his legs. He noticed Amal laughing at something from her own reading packet and asked, “What is it?”

“Our tax dollars at work,” Amal said. She showed him a pamphlet, Thirteen Simple Rules for Dealing with Americans, designed for first-time visitors with short attention spans.

Rule #1 was DON’T EXPECT THANKS: “Americans are a proud people. Though their civilization is still in its infancy, they consider themselves equal, if not superior to, older and more established cultures. The fact that they had to be liberated by outsiders is a source of great shame to them, and while the vast majority are grateful for the gift of freedom, they are extremely reluctant to show it.

“You may feel that Americans complain too much. Try to ignore this. Pointing out the many ways in which their lives have improved will only make them complain more. Never tell an American that they ‘ought to be thankful.’ In American culture this is considered a grave insult and may lead to violence.”

The accompanying cartoon illustration showed a tank parked on the lawn of a house. The tank driver stood beside his vehicle, smiling and holding out a hand of friendship, but the owner of the house, a sullen black man in a tri-cornered hat, had his arms crossed. In the background a woman could be seen peeking out the house’s front window, looking frightened—as well she might be, Mustafa thought, with a cannon pointed at her living room.

“Isn’t it brilliant?” Amal said. She indicated the byline on the pamphlet’s back cover. “The American Culture Initiative, I remember my mother showing me the budget earmark for this. They got three million riyals just for research. Three million riyals, to figure out that people won’t say thank you if you drive a tank into their yard. That’s money well spent, don’t you think?”

“It might have been,” Mustafa said, “if anyone in the Coalition had paid attention.”

Two hours later they crossed the Moroccan coastline. As the cargolifter headed out over the Atlantic, Mustafa opened a folder marked TOP SECRET. Inside was a summary and partial transcript of the interrogation of Lyndon Baines Johnson.

The Coalition had not planned on taking the American president alive. The opening move in the “shock and awe” campaign had been an attempted decapitation strike: Arabian stealth bombers based out of Houston had targeted the White House, the Capitol Building, and seven command bunkers scattered throughout the District of Columbia. The attacks on the Capitol and the bunkers had been successful, but the smart bombs dropped on the White House had all either missed the target or failed to detonate—a statistical unlikelihood that verged on the miraculous and convinced the Coalition air commander not to bother with a follow-up strike.

LBJ must have seen the hand of God in the White House’s survival as well. Rather than go into hiding once the invasion started, he remained in the executive mansion until ground forces arrived to apprehend him. Two different stories were told about his capture. In one version, reported by FOX News and dismissed by the Arab government as propaganda, a defiant Johnson was waiting in the Oval Office when the UAS Army Fourth Infantry entered the White House. The president saluted the soldiers, then thwacked his cane against the unexploded thousand-kilo bomb that had crushed his desk, asking, “Did you gentlemen lose this?”

In the other version, as told to Al Jazeera by an Army corporal who claimed to have been there, Johnson was found upstairs, cowering in the Lincoln Bedroom. Frightened and confused, he had seemed unable at first to comprehend the presence of foreign troops in his home. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, over and over again. Mustafa had always suspected that this version of events was propaganda as well, the notion of a senile dictator fitting too neatly with the official rationale for the war. But according to the folder in his hands, the story was accurate, except for one detail: The question Johnson asked his captors was not “What are you doing here?” but “What am I doing here?”

The Coalition’s leaders debated what to do with LBJ now that he was in custody. The consensus was that he should be turned over to the Americans for trial—once the country had a functioning legal system again—but before that happened there were some questions that needed answering, about 11/9 and about the elusive WMDs. A few hardliners advocated sending him to the Chwaka Bay detention camp on the island of Zanzibar, but that plan was rejected for fear that the ninety-four-year-old Johnson was too frail to survive the trip, let alone the standard interrogation process. Instead he was flown by helicopter to Cape Cod, to the old Kennedy Compound. There, attended by a team of Navy doctors, he slept in a real bed and ate decent food. He was permitted books, music, and DVDs, though he was denied newspapers and live television. Twice daily if he wished he was allowed to go for walks on the beach, frogmen in the surf making sure he didn’t try to drown himself.

With this gentle treatment, his physical and mental health improved, as did his mood. By the time an intelligence officer named Abd al Rahim al Talib arrived to interview him, Johnson was ready to talk.