The writer and composer, Paul Bowles, one of America's most famous expatriates, died in Tangier on November 18, 1999. He had lived there for more than half a century. Bowles' writings cover the different changes Morocco witnessed stretching from colonial times to independence. Although Bowles wrote for a Western audience, he played a great role in bringing attention to Moroccan popular culture. Still, Bowles' writings raise a series of controversies among Moroccan intellectuals. My choice of studying Paul Bowles' representation1 of North Africa is delimited by my interest in the politico-ideological implication of the literary text and by the fact that Bowles is the most prominent American writer who had lived for more than half a century in Tangier, and whose fiction and non-fiction largely deal with North African, particularly Moroccan culture and society. "...'culture' is used to refer to whatever is distinctive about 'the way of life' of a people...".