A Moroccan once told me that Paul Bowles was more Moroccan than Tahar Ben Jelloun.
This man, Mohamed Ulad, had spent two years, in the open house salons Paul Bowles held in his home every evening. He was barely twenty at the time.
One day Bowles, asked Ulad, Why are you here every day?
Ulad replied— I want to make a documentary with you.
What resulted was a beautiful thirty minute short semi fictional documentary with Bowles. In black and white, with archival footage of Morocco, and Bowles nearly in his death bed at the time.
There were scenes that were very difficult to shoot given his lack of energy, Mohamed Ulad tells me.
The documentary is not a documentary about Bowles, he says. It is a meditation on death. And a beautiful one it is.
Ulad tells me how he met Bowles, the strange and convenient relationship he had with his wife Jane and gory details about the writers in Morocco— such as one man going into the market to buy fresh human blood which he would store in his refrigerator to consume.
When I wanted to write this essay, Ulad says, the question to ask was, why this influx of writers to Morocco? And why were they almost all homosexual? Was it the political situation in America at the time that gave them a sense of freedom in Morocco? The easy access to drugs and local boys?
In this part of the essay I give you the general story and my short interview with Ulad. I’ve translated the transcript In subsequent sequels, I will focus on homosexuality in Morocco which, Ulad tells me is a complex social structure.
