A little boy from the Moroccan South is set on crossing illegaly, like so many others, the strait of Gibraltar in order to reach Spain and the "promised land" of European consumer society. A European writer, his imagination exhausted, comes to visit, as some kind of living museum, places and characters of a legend: the Tangier of the "international zone" days. Two people who cross each others path in present day Tanger but never meet. They live worlds apart. Following them, the film explores the whole geographical and human scenery of the city - a retired British spy, a secret synagogue, a lady who may have run a boy's brothel, a concert of Arab-Andalusian music, Phenician tombs turned into garbage diposal ... The shadows of Jean Genet, Jane Bowles and William Burroughs are around, as real as the presence of Paul Bowles and Mohamed Choukri. At the end the film leaves its two characters on the threshold of their new life.