Egyptian elites used Sudanese servants to symbolize unbreachable social borders.

Evidence

In this sense, the idea of the Sudanese as servants fits a long tradition in the representation of social borders. The Sudanese servant is part of an old and idealized image of the proper Ottoman–ruling class household and of the social boundaries upheld and enforced by Egypt’s elites. Following this tradition, Fayrüz is lascivious, with hungry eyes for Marguerite, eager to cross social lines he does not clearly understand. As a eunuch, of course, he can have none of it.As a Sudanese servant, his crossing of boundaries into equal social status is equally as unthinkable. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 956

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The Sudanese-as-eunuch double exclusion (cannot cross class OR gender lines) is a dense image of layered subordination worth sitting with.
• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s Egypt-vs-Sudan coloniality question: Egyptian identity partially constructed by marking Sudanese as below the social boundary. Connects to theories of colonial mimicry and the internal other.