Permalinks and directories

I have permalinks turned on and installed wordpress in the root of my site. If I go to a directory I have made for something other then wordpress the htaccess file kicks in and altho it excist I get a 404

the directory I am trying to enter is like this http://www.mysite.com/nonblogdir/index.html

I am sure it is just one line in my htaccess file to overcome this but I have been looking for some time now and can’t find it

Could use some help on it
Regards,
Edwin