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Club feels like home

International Night at Tampa's Bahasa Lounge caters to the Middle Eastern community.

By TAMARA EL-KHOURY
Published August 24, 2005

	[Times photo: Carrie Pratt]
	Suad Shamseddine, left, of Pinellas Park but originally from Sierra Leone, dances with Fadi Shalabi of Tampa as Shamseddine's friend Manal Caldwell, far right, of Tampa and originally from Egypt, dances nearby at the Bahasa Lounge Wednesday night.

Bodies were packed in close as the night's first belly dancer took the floor. She gyrated and twirled, shaking the glittery beads on her blue bustier.

The most confident onlooker left the circle to join her. Men stomped their feet while women smoothly swung their hips. The smell of fruit-flavored tobacco hung heavy.

In hoop earrings and an itty-bitty jean skirt, Elvedina Talic, 18, watched.

"I cannot do that," she told her friends.

Minutes later, the DJ began playing a popular Egyptian song, and the belly dancer pulled Talic onto center stage. She hesitated for a just moment, then began shaking it.

The music, the food, the tobacco pipes - the night was Arabic. Talic, a Bosnian-born resident of St. Petersburg, danced to foreign words with people from all over the world.

While conflict rages in the Middle East, Egyptians, Jordanians, Palestinians, Lebanese and Syrians were laughing and singing together on a Tampa dance floor.

"I think they come to kind of get a taste for what they used to get back home," said Scott Smith, 33, one of the club's owners. "We offer that home away from home feeling."

Bahasa Lounge, a Bali-themed Tampa club on West Kennedy Boulevard, is one of a handful of places in Tampa Bay that give Arab residents a place to enjoy their culture in a club setting. Here, politics are taboo and Muslims and Christians embrace. The Tampa Bay area is home to roughly 11,500 Arabs, according to the 2000 census.

Wednesday night at Bahasa is International Night, but every few weeks the club caters specifically to the Arabic clientele. A recent event featured three belly dancers, an Arabic singer and trays of Middle Eastern food made by Ahmed Zidan, 43, the night's promoter.

"One night a week we love to get together," Zidan said. "We don't care what color you are, what religion you are."

Perhaps no one danced harder than Manal Caldwell, 35, an Egyptian hair stylist living in Tampa.

"I love belly dancing. "You can't get this anywhere else," she said before a friend from Sierra Leone pulled her away onto the dance floor.

The other days of the week are Latin, Urban, College and Ladies' nights.

Smith said the concept of International Nights started with an Ybor club called 1509, where he was a bartender. People packed the club to dance to music from all over the world. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, Smith said the popular night fizzled.

The club was sold, and two years ago, Smith and his partners brought the concept to Bahasa, where he sees the popularity of International Night reviving.

About 150 people came on a recent Wednesday. Smith said he expects about 100 more when college kids come back from summer break.

Paul Aoun, 30, said he has come to Bahasa's International Night almost every week since he moved to Tampa in March. He comes even when he's not singing.

Aoun, a Lebanese, has traveled the country singing at weddings and other events. He performs every Saturday at an Oldsmar restaurant on Race Track Road and sings at Bahasa once a month.

He said he comes because he enjoys the music, the mix of people and the hookah pipes.

And the people enjoy him.

"I can accommodate any type of crowd," he said.

On this night, accompanied by a keyboardist and a blond belly dancer in a fuchsia outfit, Aoun's rich voice paused only to get the group clapping to his beat.

In Arabic, they sang along to the familiar songs from home. Aoun didn't stop, one song melting into the next. Trancelike, a man broke out in a dance, stomping the ground so hard the floor trembled.

Aoun put down his microphone and picked up a hand drum. The notes of the keyboard couldn't drown out the crowd, which whooped as Aoun pounded the drum faster as the belly dancer shook her body.

People tried to back the crowd up to give Aoun and the dancer space, but they closed back in, singing the same language.

[Last modified August 24, 2005, 01:14:20]