IN SEPTEMBER 2001 I had recently retired from my tenured position in the Colorado Trustee Colleges and had moved to California to take a full-time position as adjunct professor at San Diego State University. During the second week of classes I walked into my eight o’clock Tuesday morning Shakespeare class to find the students watching the TV monitors, which showed a plume of black smoke rising from one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City. I turned off the monitor and proceeded to lead a discussion of an early Shakespeare history play: Part 1 of King Henry VI. At the time, like everyone else except the “perps,” I had no idea what was happening or how it would impact my life, but by the end of the academic year I realized that my full-time adjunct position was in jeopardy because of plummeting California tax revenues, which would cause sharp budget cuts to a university system that was already suffering from years of austerity measures. By the end of the academic year I was receiving not-so-subtle hints that my nontenured position was not secure: when I cruised through the department office, the chairperson would look at me sideways (“Well, you know, you’re the highest paid adjunct …”). On two previous occasions I had served as a Fulbright professor (Ankara 1984–86; Istanbul 1995–96), so I decided to apply for another Fulbright, this time to Morocco, in order to weather the storm for a couple of years and then return to California after the economy returned to normal. I surmised that since Tangier and San Diego had nearly the same latitude and were west coast climates, and since both Southern California and Morocco had ocean, mountains, and desert, it would be a good move. Thus, I set out with my family for Morocco, where I spent two years, from 2003 to 2005, living first in Tétouan and then in Tangier, while teaching at Abdelmalek Essaâdi University. Before leaving the United States, on the advice of a colleague and friend I purchased The Selected Stories by Paul Bowles, whom I had never read before. Thus began a journey that resulted in Paul Bowles: In the American Grain.