He retired to the kitchens and Simon stared at me. We looked out at the dark empty street outside the window, and the thought of going back out there and hanging out with the doorway figures and dead cats for three hours seemed impossibly distressing. I clutched at the waiter's arm desperately while Simon flicked violently through the guidebook. 'Look,' I said, gabbling a little, 'do you know of anywhere else we can go? Our bus isn't until five and we don't really want to wait in the streets.'

He put his head on one side and thought carefully. 'I know a place,' he said. He started to issue complicated instructions, but then motioned for us to follow him outside. 'Come, I show you,' he said.

'Thank you very much.' Shouldering our backpacks again, we followed him gratefully out into the night. He led us on a long walk through the back streets of the city, through what we assumed to be a particularly dodgy neighbourhood; we passed men fighting and sleeping in the grey darkness of doorways and alleys; I was not looking forward to the walk back to the CTM station at half-four in the morning, assuming we could even find our way back.

We came out by a main road that we recognised from our last trip to Casa; the shops were not far from here. On the corner was a big, bright, busy café called Nuit et Jour because-like the last one-it was open all day and night. Thanking our guide profusely, we wandered in and picked a table, asking the waiter immediately if the café was twenty-four-hour: it was.

We relaxed again and settled down to wait, thinking ourselves lucky to have found someone who had taken us halfway across the city to show us somewhere we could wait. We had another coffee, talking about the number of strange characters there were in Casablanca, wandering about the streets in the middle of the night. Simon swore one of them had been carrying a knife, and I had seen a few with bottles.

We shivered and sipped our coffee.