"The excitement of finding something strange consists precisely in noting its strangeness," says Paul Bowles in the foreword. In his final bit of writing before his death, Bowles hit on the driving force that impels the best travel writers: the urge to tell someone about their trips. In this book, they find the opportunity, bringing readers along on their journeys to places made unique and fascinating by the works of the best writers in literature. "The feet that are being followed belong to outstanding literary figures. The feet following them are exceptional travel writers." - Toronto Star

Chapter One

Paul Bowles

Dreaming in Tangier

Victoria Brooks

It is a balmy night. A night of 1,001 stars. Outside her suite overlooking the mosque is a sitting room shaped like a cupola. She has thrown the windows wide to the sounds of the ancient Medina, to the drums of the women, to the ancient and reverent song of the muezzins--to her dreams. When the 4:00 a.m. call of the muezzins comes, she dreams of a young man who invites her to a concert held in a large, timeless garden edged with sunset splashes of fragrant mimosa and purple bougainvillea. The garden is shaded by date palms that sway like belly dancers and is flanked by high walls washed in white. Above, the sky is a sea of shimmering blue.

    The young man in her dream is well spoken and elegant. He exudes brilliance as if it were a hot white light. She wonders if he is the actor Steve McQueen. She knows he is famous. His words to her evoke mystery and promise, maybe even wisdom. As he speaks, the garden becomes a yellow desert filled with the sound of flutes and drums. He speaks gently of his passions: travel, music, literature, and Morocco. She gazes at him, marveling at the oceanic depth of his teal eyes, his gaze as profound and entrancing as an Arabian sheikh's. Moving closer, he gently kisses her mouth.

    She awakens. The experience has begun.

Just a 20-minute walk from Place de France in Tangier, Morocco, is Paul Bowles's three-and-a-half-room flat, located in a nondescript suburban four-story building. The apartments sit atop a convenience store stocked with detergent, Coca-Cola, and plastic bottles of Sidi Ali and Olmos mineral water. Today the store is closed and the cheap goods are protected by rolling aluminum shutters. The entrance to the building is in the rear. The small metal elevator that brings visitors and pilgrims to Bowles's door creaks as it ascends. The safe, middle-class street outside is empty, except for a few neighborhood children playing jacks. Bowles lives alone, looked after by a trusted manservant. Born in 1910, the dreamer will soon be 89. His blue eyes are as cloudy as milky tea, but his memories are vivid.

    When I first see the author, I find him wrapped in an old brown housecoat and woolen blankets on his monastic single bed. Around him are the items usually found in a sickroom: Kleenex, aspirins, sinus medicine, a glass with a straw, books and papers he can no longer see. Outside his comfortable, lived-in apartment, tall palms housing twittering birds shudder slightly in the cool Atlantic air of spring, much as his lungs do when he breathes. In his still-agile spectator's mind, he is aware of the details of life beyond his window. He was, is, the ultimate dreamer--a transcendent creator, a wizard of the written word. His brilliance remains untouched by the heavy cloak of age he is forced to wear. His brilliance is still a hot white light that pierces the veneer of humanity.

    At Port de Tangier, just a few miles from where the old dreamer rests, a ferry opens its white painted metal mouth to expel trucks, cars, campers, Land Rovers, workers, and passengers. Waiting like an expectant home of mosquitoes are the touts. Ragged and unshaven, they loll and wait and smoke, stubbing their cigarettes on the litter-strewn ground. The ferry made no sound as it slid through the Strait of Gibraltar, but they know it has arrived. The knowledge coils them like springs. The tourists have arrived. The litany of the touts begins.

    "Come with me. Come with me," one cries.

    "You will lose your way. You may be robbed," another shouts.

    Like barracuda, they follow the tourists warily but aggressively with their hungry, shifty eyes. "A room at a good hotel, first-class, clean, cheap," several cajole.

    "I will guide you through the Casbah," others promise. "Come with me. Come with me."

    This is Port de Tangier, where the ferries arrive from Algeciras, Spain, where touts slouch and wait, where crumpled Marvel and Gitane packs cover the customs house floor just as they did when Nelson Dyar, Paul Bowles's protagonist in the nightmarish novel Let It Come Down , first arrived.

* * *

It is a humid late-summer day in 1947. A parade of porters, dressed like poor physicians in stained blue cotton, carry the traveler's burden through the tight knots of touts to a fleet of ancient, beatup Mercedes, Citroën, and Renault cabs. In the cavernous boots of the old-fashioned taxis, the sweating porters deposit 13 trunks, one of which is a makeshift library heavy with books. The others are treasure chests stuffed with elegant clothes: a few pale tropical suits of silk and linen; a straw hat woven in Panama, still in its narrow wooden box; and, for lounging, a striped silk-and-cotton djellaba purchased by the dreamer in a market in Fez, where he had spent most of that summer. Carefully wrapped in the clothes is a heavy tape recorder, along with notebooks and pens for writing. The dreamer has truly arrived. He is young and handsome, blond and blue-eyed, slim and elegant. He is the still-youthful Paul Bowles.

    The dreamer gropes in his pockets for coins for the porters. He looks up and admires the whiteness of the sky. It is like the inside of an oyster shell, like the painted houses of Tangier that are capped by ceramic-tiled roofs whose color and shape mimic the waves and hue of the sea.

* * *

From 1923 to 1956, Tangier was an international zone, a twilight one-night stand that danced with naked abandon to the dubious tune of resident diplomatic agents from nine nations: France, Spain, Britain, Portugal, Sweden, Holland, Belgium, Italy, and the United States. Its special status meant it was a free-money market and almost no one was denied entry. It was an anything-goes town. It was what author William Burroughs called the "Interzone." Its wide-open nature attracted the wealthy and the louche, the artist and the exile. And some were all of these.

    Paul Bowles was lured to Morocco by a vivid dream on a balmy New York City evening in 1947, the smell of spring, of change itself, tangible in the air. It was a dream that took him back to Tangier where he had spent a deliciously exotic summer 16 years earlier in 1931 with composer Aaron Copland, his friend and mentor. The dream had been launched in France on the advice of novelist Gertrude Stein, who had told Bowles, "Go to Tangier." Nearly 70 years later, Bowles says to me in his apartment, "It was to be a lark, a one-summer stand."

    Bowles had purchased passage for Copland and himself from Marseilles to Tangier, but just before they sailed, the captain of the Iméréthie II announced an itinerary change to Ceuta, a Spanish possession in Morocco on a peninsula that juts into the Mediterranean Sea 75 miles northeast of Tangier. The 20-year-old Bowles stood alone on the ferry's planked deck at dawn, imagining the summer heat of Tangier "like a Turkish bath" as he leaned against the salt-sprayed rail deep in thought. His sharp young eyes were trained on the rugged scribble of the mountains of Algeria, and he was filled with a sense of excitement. Then, as he writes in his autobiography Without Stopping , his dreamer's vision turned inside out as he gave form to his "unreasoned conviction that certain areas of the earth's surface contained more magic than others." This conviction, this view of himself, initiated his self-exile in Tangier. To Bowles, his flight was akin to escaping from a prison whose bars were the conventions and confines of the Western world.

    On that first trip in 1931, Bowles and Copland disembarked for their summer lark in Ceuta with so much luggage that they needed a small detachment of porters. As soon as they could, the pair boarded a narrow-gauge train for Tangier. On arrival they booked into El Minzah, a new deluxe hotel, when they couldn't get a room at the Grand Hôtel Villa de France, which Gertrude Stein had recommended.

    To this day, Bowles wonders about the reason for the change in the ship's itinerary. "It's still unknown to me," he tells me with a shake of his head, his old eyes misted with the past and the mystery of the unknown.

    The change in destination did nothing to transform his destiny, however. Bowles's initial look at the North African landscape became the first few strokes on a paper canvas that was soon sealed and signed with the indelible ink of his existence in Tangier and his travels throughout Morocco. The first time he saw Tangier, he says, "I loved it more than any place I'd seen in my life."

    Still, it wasn't until 1947 that Bowles was able to settle in Tangier. He had already gained a considerable reputation as a stage composer, having written scores for Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie and Summer and Smoke ; William Saroyan's Love's Old Sweet Song ; Lillian Hellman's The Watch on the Rhine ; and Horse Eats Hat , directed by Orson Welles for the Federal Theater Project.

    His short story "A Distant Episode" had been published by the Partisan Review in January 1947 and was critically acclaimed. The story tells of a condescending American linguistics professor whose tongue is cut out by nomads when he wanders off the tourist path. The professor becomes a captive and is paraded through the North African desert, miming obscene gestures taught to him by those he once thought he was superior to. It is a tale that renders the so-called civilized world and all its intellectual trappings meaningless, an account of the perils that may face Westerners who stray into uncharted territories. Tangier was, and is, such a place. The central conceit of "A Distant Episode" is Bowles's recurring theme, his trademark and his warning.

    After his talent was recognized, Bowles was offered an advance by the U.S. publisher Doubleday for a yet-to-be-written novel that he would eventually title The Sheltering Sky . On the brink of literary success, he booked a one-way passage in June 1947 from New York to Morocco. The writer Jane Auer Bowles, his wife since 1938, was to follow in six months. She was a lesbian, he a homosexual.

    But it wasn't only the Bowleses who were enticed by the exotic allure of Tangier. European émigrés, American expatriates, and literary renegades of every stripe descended on the sybaritic city where anything could be had for very little money, where homosexuality was accepted, where use of the local kif (cannabis and tobacco) and majoun (hashish jam) were commonplace, where the lifestyle was decadently delicious, sometimes even depraved.

    As Bowles notes in Without Stopping , Tangier struck him as a dream city: "Its topography was rich in prototypal dream scenes: covered streets like corridors ... hidden terraces high above the sea, streets consisting only of steps ... as well as the classical dream equipment of tunnels, ramparts, ruins, dungeons and cliffs."

    Bowles wrote as he traveled in Morocco, constructing his first novel from within his soul, layering it with the details and textures of North Africa. Much of his writing was done while lying in French pension beds. But in the autumn of 1947 he purchased a villa in Tangier for $500 and settled down to complete The Sheltering Sky .

    Paul and Jane Bowles would always travel often and far, but their hearts would remain caught in the gossamer web of Morocco. The dreamer's talented and tempestuous wife often flitted like a nervous butterfly from Connecticut or New York and back, following her whims and women (New York ladies and Berber country girls). In between she practiced her craft (the novel Two Serious Ladies , the play In the Summer House , and a short-story collection Plain Pleasures ). Jane Bowles, too, belonged to Tangier. After a long illness, though, she died of a stroke in 1973 at the age of 56.

    Cecil Beaton, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, and Tennessee Williams all visited Tangier during Bowles's first few years in the city. David Herbert, second son of the Earl of Pembroke, who was once described by guest Ian Fleming as the "Queen Mother of Tangier," and Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton held court in the city, where expatriates were nicknamed tangerinos and natives were dubbed tanjawis .

    After her third divorce in 1946, Hutton purchased a stone palace inside the Casbah, the fortress that stands within the walls of the old Arab quarter known as the Medina. Hutton threw parties featuring camels, snake charmers, belly dancers, and "blue men" brought in from Morocco's High Atlas Mountains. The blue men are a tribe of tall, handsome nomads whose skin is stained indigo from the dye in their turbans and flowing desert robes. The "poor little rich girl" entertained like a nomad queen in a Hollywood extravaganza, wearing glittering Moroccan caftans while seated on a throne. When not in a party mood, she retired to her bedchamber, and disappointed guests went in search of pleasure elsewhere.

    More than a half century later, Bowles shares a memory of her with me: "Barbara Hutton was so weak from reducing and pills she had to be carried through the streets of the Medina when she left her palace." He "was not impressed with her dramatics," her messy life, and preferred to distance himself from the decadent fray. Over the years, his desire for solitude has been frequently interrupted by the parade of socialites, artists, exiles, and escape artists who have passed through Tangier's revolving door and thrust Bowles into the role of the city's unofficial, often reluctant ambassador.

    In the 1950s, a motley crew of literary renegades, including Beat writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac and their godfather William Burroughs, made the scene. In 1954 Burroughs followed Bowles to Tangier after reading The Sheltering Sky , a novel written in a dazzling, visionary stream-of-consciousness style with more than a few echoes of the work of Albert Camus and Edgar Allan Poe, the authors Bowles most admired. Bowles's masterpiece of three American postwar travelers adrift on an emotional voyage in the desolate yet beautiful North African Sahara explores their creator's powerful theme: the dream/nightmare that awaits the culturally and morally estranged.

    Doubleday, which had already paid Bowles an advance, refused to accept the book "for not being a novel," so the manuscript began a yearlong journey across publishers' desks before its release in September 1949 by the English publisher John Lehmann. A month later an American edition was put out by New Directions, and soon after the novel became an international bestseller and received powerful critical praise. In 1959 Norman Mailer wrote in Advertisements for Myself : "Paul Bowles opened the world of Hip. He let in the murder, the drugs, the incest, the death of the Square ... the call of the orgy, the end of civilization; he invited all of us to these themes."

    The Sheltering Sky 's mystique was heightened by the fact that Bowles had put himself into a majoun -induced state to write his character Port Moresby's grippingly horrific death scene. Local drugs were often used by the Tangier literary set to tap into their subconscious minds and write in the "proper style."

    Burroughs, whom the locals called El Hombre Invisible, lived in Tangier for four years. In a small room in the city's Hôtel El Muniria, he wrote his hallucinatory satire Naked Lunch , a fictional rendering of his own descent into the hellish world of the heroin addict. Later, when Bowles and I rendezvous on the outskirts of Tangier, he conjures up an image of Burroughs: "He was always dressed to his fingertips in black, with black gloves that he would slowly and theatrically peel off, one finger at a time, like an undertaker." In the beginning, Bowles was aloof with Burroughs, but later, he admits, he came to "admire his humor."

    In Let It Come Down , Bowles writes that "If a man was not on his way anywhere ... then the best thing for him to do is sit back and be." The literary, the louche, and the loaded followed his vision of flickering light and shadow, pounding drums, shifting desert sands, and Moroccan keyhole doors that lead into the dark recesses of the human mind. Over mint tea, sherry, kif , and Marlboroughs, sybarites and eccentrics reclined low in the scuffed brown leather chairs of the Café de Paris on Place de France, basking in the intense light of Bowles's oracle.

    Now, outside the café, I watch the continuing pageant in Rue de la Liberté: beggars with outstretched, unwashed palms etched with want; darkly handsome men, both young and old, in brightly hued pantaloons or tassel-hooded djellabas; Berber women with round peasant faces obscured by the shade of their wide-brimmed straw hats, black pom-poms dancing to the soft beating of their bare feet as they walk their wares to the souks; and Arab women swaddled from shining midnight eyes to pale toes in voluptuous white cotton. It's an ageless procession of Arab commerce and culture, and all of it unfolds just as it did in Bowles's heyday. During one of our meetings, he told me gnomically: "If we weren't eccentrics, we wouldn't have been here." And now I see what he meant. All around me are shopkeepers selling faux antiques, boxes of camel bones from the Sahara encrusted with amber and silver, and leather slippers from Fez as soft and yellow as butter. The shopkeepers are entirely men, and they place their carved wooden chairs strategically on the street, vying for attention among the beggars in cheap Western garb and old men in fezzes and stained caftans.

    The Tangier of past and present become one, then separate. The hours still pass as if in a dream, but today the café de Paris is no longer an appropriated salon where the Bowleses and the literary renegades discuss their muses. These days it brims with gloomy unemployed Arab men who hover over mint tea in glasses that are stormy with milk.

    The renegades, infidels, and exiles took everything they could from Tangier. And when the Moroccan oasis no longer offered the free status of an international zone, they scattered. For them it was a place to use like a cheap, exciting prostitute, a place to take selfish pleasure for a night, a year, or until the thrill was gone. But Bowles stayed, and he, and the City of the Dream, still mesmerize.

    Yes, the Master remained, centered in his own vision, to write more novels and stories and to translate the works of talented Moroccan authors, continuing to offer his revelations to the world, his rare gift wrapped in sunlight and shadow, extreme beauty and disturbing discovery.

She dreams again. This time she lies sleeping in Tangier's famous Hôtel El Minzah in a suite overlooking the waters of the Strait of Gibraltar and the sleek ferries from Algeciras that slide into the harbor like a hallucination from Paul Bowles's world.

    The experience has begun. It is Sunday. She dreams she is riding in an aged Mercedes taxi down Boulevard Pasteur, down a long, empty avenue lined with bougainvillea and palms, the outstretched, sun-baked fronds of the latter reaching heavenward as if seeking Allah's benediction. Her driver is named Ali. The sun shines high and clear. The sky is as translucent and white as a pearl. Abruptly she tells Ali to stop.

    She has spotted the old dreamer perched on a folding stool at the side of the deserted road. Leaving the taxi and approaching him, she sits beside his stool: she, a child, a convert, a pilgrim; he, her oracle. Birds chirp discreetly in the trees, while on a distant hill a herd of goats bleat, the sounds fading away like old memories.

    He regales her with his travels to Sri Lanka, Santiago de Cuba, Panama, Berlin, Mexico, and Central America. He tells her of New York and his dislike of large cities, then, when she asks him what wisdom he has acquired during his decades in Tangier, he replies, "Patience." Then he adds, "This is as good a place as any. It has been good to me."

    He is elegant, even more so than when she dreamt about him as Steve McQueen. His eyes are as deep and mysterious as his soul, as entrancing as a sheikh's. He has wisdom, charm, humor. She loves him. He is Paul Bowles. She knows she is blessed just by sitting near him. She puts her hand over his. He rises with difficulty, then walks in the sunlight like some old god, stopping to rest on the folding stool when he tires. Too soon the manservant notes his master's exhaustion and tells her they must go.

    She gives Bowles a gentle lover's kiss on his soft old mouth. As she watches his battered gray Citroën drive slowly away, she vaguely remembers something important he once wrote in Without Stopping : "I had always been vaguely certain that sometime during my life I should come into a magic place which, in disclosing its secrets, would give me wisdom and ecstasy, perhaps even death."

    She raises her eyes to the pale horizon and sees Tangier like a scrawl of mauve ink on a page of his dream. It is his Tangier, refracted like a diamond through her veil of tears.

(Note: A few weeks before his 89th birthday, Paul Bowles died on November 18, 1999, of heart failure in the Italian Hospital in Tangier. I had planned to return to Morocco to present him with a copy of Literary Trips , with this story in it. If only I could have sat by his narrow bed and held his gnarled old hand one last time.)

The Writer's Trail

Following in the Footsteps

Destination:Morocco's raffish port city Tangier is down-at-the-heels but fascinating. In 1949 Truman Capote called it "that ragamuffin city." Since then its decaying atmosphere has put many tourists off, but if you're looking for truly memorable experiences in your travels, this is the place to visit. The wide-open bars of Tangier's international-zone days where the notorious and the famous could be seen enjoying a "walk" on the wild side don't exist anymore (after Moroccan independence in 1956, alcohol was banned in the Medina), but Paul Bowles's City of the Dream is still a feast for the senses. Marvel at the splendid Moorish architecture and the intricate labyrinth of the Medina. Haggle with hawkers in the souks. Drink in the sight of Arab women and men in velvet, silk, cotton, or brightly colored rayon djellabas moving through tangled streets bursting with all that life has to offer. Enter the Dream.

Location: Tangier is on Morocco's northern coast at the west end of the Strait of Gibraltar. It is an ocean's breath away from Europe; only nine miles of sea separate it from Spain.

Getting There: Royal Air Maroc is the magic carpet to Morocco and flies from North America and major cities around the globe. There is usually a stopover in Casablanca, Air Maroc's hub. For information call 1-800-344-6726 or the airline's New York City office at (212) 974-3850. In Canada call (514) 285-1937. Air Maroc's Web site is www.royalairmaroc.com . Iberia, British Airways, and Air France also fly from Spain, London, or Paris to Tangier. If you go by sea, there are ferry routes (passenger and vehicle) from Spain, France, and Gibraltar. Some routes also feature hydrofoils. From Algeciras, Spain, it is two and a half hours by car ferry to Tangier. You can also take a ferry from Algeciras to the Spanish duty-free territory of Ceuta (one and a half hours). From Sète, in southern France, the crossing to Tangier takes 36 hours. There are also ferries from Almeria (six and a half hours) and Málaga (seven hours) in Spain to the Spanish duty-free port of Melilla. Tickets can be purchased from travel agencies or from ferry-company offices at port terminals (unreliable on weekends) in all these places. Avoid the ferries, if at all possible, in July and August when they are packed with migrant workers. Passports must be stamped before disembarkation. Longer routes usually warrant reservations. Call your local Moroccan tourist board for schedules and contact numbers.

Orientation: Tangier's Grand Socco (Large Square) is located just outside the walls of the Medina (Arab quarter) and links the old city with the Ville Nouvelle (European section). The Medina straddles a nearby hill. Its main street, Rue es Siaghin, leads to the Petit Socco (Small Square) in the heart of the Medina. The Petit Socco, bordered by cafés and old residences, is where the literary renegades hung out and where the action still is. Walk downhill (southeast) to the port from here. The Casbah is on a cliff in the northwest corner of the Medina. Follow Rue des Chrétiens and its continuation, Rue Ben Raisouli, until you arrive at the lower gate of this unique section of the city. The Ville Nouvelle is west and south of the Medina. The international airport is eight miles (about a 30-minute drive) from the center of Tangier.

Tip: Keep in mind poet Allen Ginsberg's definition of hip: "innately understanding and all-tolerant."

Getting Around: Wander by foot in the Medina. For trips in the Ville Nouvelle, to the beaches, or to the Grottes d'Hercule, take one of the cheap and plentiful taxis. Car rental is expensive, but you'll want a vehicle to travel cross-country. Offices of the international companies (Hertz, Avis) can all be found in Tangier, but local agencies are cheaper.

Literary Sleeps

Hôtel El Minzah:This famous Moorish-style, 142-room, 17-suite hotel was built in 1930 and is well situated near the Medina. Paul Bowles stayed here on his first trip to Tangier in 1931. The Grand Hôtel Villa de France, where Gertrude Stein told him to stay, is now boarded up. A suite at El Minzah will reward you with a fabulous view of Tangier, the Strait of Gibraltar, and even Spain on a clear day. The swimming pool, gardens, workout room, and spa are welcome havens from the hustle of Tangier. 85 Rue de la Liberté. Tel.: (212-9) 93 58 85. Fax: (212-9) 93 45 46. Expensive.

Hôtel Continental: Atmospheric and friendly 60-room hotel in the Medina where some scenes of the film version of The Sheltering Sky were shot (ask in the hotel shop to see photos taken during the filming). The hotel's seductive character makes up for its worn-around-the-edges quality. One of the hotel bellmen has worked in the hotel since he was a child and will regale you with stories of the past. Ask for a room overlooking the port. Book ahead; the hotel is sometimes packed with tour groups or film crews. 36 Rue Dar El Baroud. Tel.: (212-9) 93 10 24. Fax: (212-9) 93 11 43. Inexpensive.

Hôtel El Muniria: This is the small hotel in the Ville Nouvelle where, in room 9, William Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch . The establishment is English-owned and has rooms with showers. Some rooms have excellent views (numbers 7 and 8). Trendy bar with superb view is either crowded with young Moroccans or empty. 1 Rue Magellan. Inexpensive.

Hôtel Palais Jamai, Fez: If you make it to Fez, and you should, stay where Paul and Jane Bowles did. Jane freaked out on majoun in one of the 19th-century hotel's suites and never touched the stuff again. The building was beautifully redone in 1999, but for the most authentic experience ask for a suite in the old palace. The 115-room, 25-suite hotel and its beautiful gardens and pool area overlook Fez El Bali, the most fascinating Medina in Morocco. You'll have no trouble hearing the calls of the muezzins at 4:00 a.m. here. Bab Guissa, Fez El Bali. Tel.: (212-5) 63 43 31. Fax: (212-5) 63 50 96. Extremely expensive.

Literary Sites

Café Central:This café, at the end of Rue es Siaghin in the Petit Socco, is where William Burroughs was inspired to begin Naked Lunch . If you linger long enough here, or at any of the nearby cafés, you'll probably be approached by a Moroccan selling kif .

Café de Paris: Located on Place de France in the Ville Nouvelle, this is the spot to sip and people-watch. In mid-afternoon, the café is still something of a gay hangout, but unless you're aware of this, you won't notice. Mint tea is dirt-cheap and the old leather chairs are comfortable.

Tip: Tangier is rife with pilferers. Never let any valuables, including your sunglasses, leave your hand.

Casbah: Located inside the walls of the Casbah is Sidi Hosni, Barbara Hutton's stone palace. Here she threw lavish parties for guests Charlie Chaplin, Maria Callas, Cecil Beaton, Aristotle Onassis, Claudette Colbert, Greta Garbo, and the literary set, which included Paul and Jane Bowles. Hutton's former palace is located opposite a café with a psychedelic wall painting. You may need a guide. The Woolworth heiress actually had certain streets in the Casbah widened to accommodate her Rolls-Royce. North of the mechouar , or courtyard, of Dar El Makhzen (the former sultan's palace and now a museum) is the Rue Riad Sultan where, near the Sultan's Gardens, you'll find a door that leads to Le Détroit, an upstairs café. When it was the exclusive Thousand and One Nights Restaurant, it was owned by writer Brion Gysin, who entertained his famous friends, including the Rolling Stones (Brian Jones once produced a record here) and Paul Bowles. It was also notable for the trance musicians who played here in the 1960s. The view is sensational, but the restaurant is overrun with tour groups.

Grottes d'Hercule: These natural limestone caves are six miles from Tangier. Cecil Beaton held a notorious beach party here for his literary friends. In one cave, champagne was served, and in the other, hashish. Although you can no longer imbibe decadent pleasures, unless you bring your own, the caves have a spectacular view and are well worth the trip. In classical mythology, Hercules is said to have rested here after creating the so-called Pillars of Hercules: Gibraltar and Ceuta.

Fez: In 1931 Paul Bowles told Gertrude Stein that this city "is full of flies and dust, and rats knock everything over on the tables at night. It is quite dirty and very beautiful." The ancient Medina hasn't changed a bit. In a letter to a friend, Bowles wrote: "Fez I shall make my home some day!" He never did. Tangier claimed him instead. But if you only have time for one other city in Morocco, make it Fez.

Tip: Before you take photographs of people, ask their permission, and don't be surprised if they insist on payment.

Icon Pastimes

Wander the warren of streets and alleys of Tangier with Paul Bowles's vision as your guide. Enjoy the never-ending pageant of the city and watch the many parts that its citizens play. Sit for as long as you want in the Café de Paris or any of the salons de thé where Bowles once spent long hours with his wife, Jane, and other writers and artists, both foreign and Moroccan. Purchase a djellaba in a souk, and don't forget to bargain. It's part of the Moroccan experience and is expected.

Contacts

Moroccan Tourist Office: In New York City call (212) 557-2520/1/2 or fax (212) 949-8148. In Canada call (514) 842-8111/2 or fax (514) 842-5316. Web site: www.tourism-in-morocco. com . In Tangier contact the Morocco National Tourist Board: 29 Boulevard Pasteur. Tel.: (212-9) 93 82 39.

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Copyright © 2000 Victoria Brooks. All rights reserved.