Desert of Memory. “Paul Bowles, the American writer, composer, and expatriate, died eleven months ago in

Tangier, the northern Moroccan city where he had lived for more than half a century.

Bowles was controversial in Morocco, and his death was a major news event there; yet the

Moroccan response to Bowles has not made it into American accounts. Next to nothing has

been written here about the last decades of Bowles’s life, nor about his often tense

residence in Morocco, where he had as many enemies as friends. Even with various articles

and memorials planned to commemorate the first anniversary of Bowles’s death — a two-day

tribute is planned at New York City’s 92nd Street Y on October 29 and 30 — it’s safe to wager

that his fans will be fed the tired and typical version of Bowles’s life abroad.” This essay by a professor of literature at Northwestern looks at the complicated legacy both in Morocco and the West of the “expatriate’s expatriate.” Bowles’ own Moroccan stories and the Arabic tales he brought to Western readers were a predilection of mine long before the film of The Sheltering Sky revived interest in him in the last decade of his life. Feed