Early Arabic fiction depicted European commerce as a maze of mirrors with no exit

Evidence

Appearing in 1882, it tells the story of two Egyptians who travelled to France and England in the company of an English Orientalist. On their first day in Paris, the two Egyptian protagonists wander accidentally into the vast, gas-lit premises of a wholesale supplier. Inside the building they find long corridors, each leading into another. They walk from one corridor to the next, and after a while begin to search for the way out. Turning a corner they see what looks like an exit, with people approaching from the other side. But it turns out to be a mirror, which covers the entire width and height of the wall, and the people approaching are merely their own reflections. They turn down another passage and then another, but each one ends only in a mirror. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 78

Categorization

• CANDY: The image of two Egyptians lost in a mirrored Parisian warehouse is a vivid, quotable anecdote.
• STORYSTEM: The mirrored corridor as a figure for the colonial subject trapped in European representation — could seed a story where a character must find an exit from a world of reflections.