Ordinary Girl to Extraordinary Woman! By Amy Mowafi, Writer

It’s the whimsy and charm of colonial fantasy - the bird-cage ascenseur, the syrupy sensuality of its wood-panelled bar, the soaring Zamalek ceilings - secret havens for the shadows of the past. Like a soft-focus sepia-toned photograph made reality. It’s a corner table, wine and whispered conversation. Those are the evenings when I love La Bodega most. When – unlike the multitude of other Cairene haute spots that jostle for attention in an increasingly Westernised landscape – La Bodega is serene and stoic and has little desire to impress. Those muggy Cairo nights when it feels like the setting for an epic and exotic romantic saga set against the backdrop of some war laced with dazzlingly dangerous liaisons; as if one had sashayed in straight after drinks on the terrace of The Shepheard. An old-soul in a young establishment.

And yet there have also been nights, when I have perched on a battered-leather bar stool and watched with amusement as La Bodega has nonchalantly bent to the will of the achingly hip; speaking easily to a clientele for whom cool is the lingua franca. It sizzles and sparkles, and does what a cosmopolitan hot spot is supposed to do. But it does so with a sense – one senses – of irony. As if humouring these gorgeous young things that flitter and flirt through its sumptuous spaces, all the while keeping a protective watch over the city’s languid literati, with their talk of art and books and culture and Cairo; the powerful men in loosened ties brokering big deals amongst the pretty things; the wide-eyed foreigners with their fantasies of La Belle Époque. All loyal, all loving La Bodega with none of the flighty fickleness for which the Cairo crowds are so renowned.

Amy Mowafi

I came to Cairo nearly 10 years ago with exotic dreams of love and adventure bred of literature and grainy black and white movies and an over-active imagination. And La Bodega – fatefully located in the Baehler building right by my office – indulged me. It set the scene for those early trysts with men who spoke of things I didn’t understand. Because those worldly smooth operators your mother warned you about always invited you to dinner at La Bodega. And for a few hours, that space seemed to have the power to transform an ordinary girl into an extraordinary woman.

Later on, La Bodega’s cool rooms would envelope and inspire me on those hot summer weekend afternoons when the city had emptied out. I’d sit alone in the alcove, lean against that beautiful bay window, notebook in hand and work on the column that would one day unwittingly turn into a best-selling book.

And as I grew confident of my place in this city, learning to negotiate its harsher realities with my youthful daydreams, La Bodega played host to my after-hours adventures with the friends and acquaintances I had somehow amassed. Smart, fun, daring and flirtatious, a motley crew of characters for whom La Bodega was the only place to share a laughter-fuelled nightcap.

Finally, on the eve of La Bodega’s 10th year anniversary, and my own nearly-decade in the city, La Bodega would gather all my girlfriends, some from Cairo, and many having flown in especially for the occasion. They would pile onto the sprawling sofa at the back of the lush private lounge and they would toast my upcoming marriage; my last days as a single woman in the city that had transformed me. And - though they may not have realised it - they would so in the very space that had allowed me to realise my ultimate fantasy… to become a woman of Cairo.

So here’s to 10 years of love, adventure and La Bodega…

Amy Mowafi
Writer & Managing Editor for Enigma Magazine

http://amymowafi.com/

http://www.enigma-mag.com/