Twenty-two

Humphrey Bogart had been strapped to the roof of a dilapidated communal taxi, an old white Mercedes.

It was so full of people that the passengers had all melded together, making it impossible to say where one ended and the next began. Blaine was lodged on the back seat, pressed up between a pair of veiled women.

One of them had thrust her squalling baby onto his lap, as hers was occupied by an oversized wicker basket stuffed with live chickens.

Without warning, the baby threw up all over Blaine and began screaming ferociously. Terrified by the noise, the chickens began flapping wildly, and became so animated that one of them broke free. In a frenzy of squawking and feathers, the bird flapped through the little empty space, wings fluttering against faces.

Embracing the adventure, Blaine savoured every moment.

An hour later and he was alone on the back seat.

His face pressed up against the window, he took in the gleaming streets of old Casablanca, and the hotchpotch of life that filled them.

There were wizened men pushing barrows laden with ripe pomegranates and twisted scrap metal; donkey carts, and blind beggars led through the gridlock traffic by young boys. And there were street hawkers selling cigarettes one by one, pickpockets lurking in doorways, old women scrubbing down steps, businessmen in wide ties and nylon bell-bottoms, and the scent of diesel fumes thick on the ocean breeze.

Blaine wound down the window and breathed it all in.

He couldn’t believe it – the real Casablanca, a destination of which he had dreamed night and day for as long as he could remember. He caught a flash of his grandfather’s smile in half a glass of water, and rummaged in the band of his fedora for the ticket stub. It was still there, a trophy through whose magic the journey had all begun.

‘I’m here, Grandpa,’ Blaine whispered. ‘I’m really here... in Casablanca!’