BY TONY UBANI
EVERY City has its own trade marks. Allen Avenue and Ayilara are names that provoke emotions and excitements depending on the persons involved.

They are in Lagos State, the centre of excellence. Any visitor or tourist who has not visited these places may as well have not known the city well. I am not talking about the day’s hustle and bustle . No. I mean the ferocious nocturnal  hustle and bustle. If you have been to Port Harcourt and not been to Casablanca, you may as well not have known the Garden City well.

The name Casablanca provoked my curiosity and I set out  on a night journey to be part of the fun, risk, love, gambling that is making it bubble. Casablanca in my little knowledge of history is a city in Western Morocco, located on the coast of Atlantic Ocean. It is Morocco’s largest city as well as its chief Port. It is also the biggest city in the Maghreb.

Casablanca is considered the economic  and business centre of Morocco, while the political capital city of Morocco is Rabat. That is history. Casablanca in Port Harcourt has no similarities except by name. In the day, the Restaurant looks ordinary with cleaners battling to tidy the environment from the fall-out from activities of the night crawlers.

But the night holds more attraction. On bad days, fatal attraction. The market is always full with beautiful girls competing for customers. Rave of the moment, Duncan Mighty’s song, “Port Harcourt First Son (I’m a Port Harcourt Boy)  waltzing from the giant speakers outside.

Cigarette smoke billowed, mostly from the teenagers who are clad in skimpy wears that leave nothing to imagination. I make my way to enter but run into a storm of five pretty, dazzling girls who circle me, announcing their bids and attractive offers. While I ‘m  held hostage, another car pulls up and they swarm on the occupants setting me free to have a seat by the corner.

“Oga, wetin I go bring? We have meat and fish peppersoup, Nkwobi, ugba and stockfish, rice, garri anything at all. Abi, you wan take away or you wan do am for corner. I can serve you food and the other one”,  turning round to reveal a scorpion tattoo on her bum.

“How much will it cost?”, I ask. “Oga, na pay as you go we dey do. If you last longer, your money go increase. But if you do sharp, sharp, na 2k”, she says pouring cigarette smoke on my face. I settle for fish peppersoup while the music continues.

The music of Flavour, Oyi Na Tum(I dey catch cold) sends everybody on the floor. The whole place is crowded, not allowing people to show their dancing skills. People stuck to their partners. As I zig-zagged my way in the crowd, I realized that even athletes and officials for the Sports Festival have discovered Casablanca. A place of fun. A place where the athletes who lost in their fields come to relax, eat and even ‘take away or do sharp, sharp’.