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Ahmed Yacoubi was born in Fez, Morocco in 1928 (the exact date of his birth is unknown). The expatriate writer and composer Paul Bowles met the young Ahmed ben Driss el-Yacoubi in the autumn of 1947 in Fez, and they became inseparable friends. During the 1940s and 1950s they traveled throughout Morocco and made voyages to England, Spain, Italy, Turkey, India and Japan. In 1952 Yacoubi accompanied Paul Bowles to the island of Taprobane off the coast of southern Ceylon.

Yacoubi took up art and in 1953 Bowles arranged for his first exhibition at the Librairie des Colonnes on the Boulevard Pasteur in Tangier. His art was highly acclaimed and 28 works were sold. Further exhibitions were held at the Galerie Clan in Madrid and the Betty Parsons Gallery in New York. The painter Francis Bacon arranged for an exhibition of Yacoubi's art in 1957 at the Hanover Gallery in London, England. Other exhibitions were held during the 1960s and 1970s in Tangier and Casablanca, Morocco.

Bowles translated Yacoubi's stories from Moghrebi into English: "The Man and The Woman" (1956), "The Man Who Dreamed of Fish Eating Fish" (1956) and "The Game" (1961), and a play "The Night Before Thinking" which was published in the Evergreen Review in 1960.

In 1953 Yacoubi and Bowles made a voyage to the United States and they stayed at the Connecticut estate of singer Libby Holman, who seduced the young man into a passionate affair, lavishing him with gifts. This affair was short-lived and Holman soon paid his passage back to Morocco.

Eventually Yacoubi moved to the United States living in New York City. He died from lung cancer in New York City in December 1985, at the age of 57.