Colonial-era Egyptians conceptualized themselves as passive particles flowing through the body of the state.

Evidence

Whenever I leave Cairo I think of it as our country’s heart, in which we ourselves are like the spherical particles of blood. We accumulate there, and form into lines in order to get out, proceeding just like the fluid of life. It is as though we are impelled by a regulated movement, on which the life of the body depends. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 490