Egyptian writers mocked Sudanese as mere servants while demanding realism about themselves.

Evidence

As interesting as his self-conscious discussion of art in Egypt was, when it came to the Sudanese Taymür himself remained caught in representational clichés that defied his own pleas for realism. If Egyptians, at that point in their cultural history, were amusing imitators of Europe, then the Sudanese remained, for Taymür, humorous diversions for Egyptians. Sudanese characters almost always appear as servants in Taymür’s written work. In the first play he wrote in colloquial Arabic, Al-`usfür fi al-qafas (The Sparrow in the Cage), the Sudanese eunuch Fayrüz Agha injects an element of comedy in this otherwise tragic story of a wealthy Egyptian family. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 950

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reader’s Egypt-versus-Sudan comparison: Egyptians’ cultural cringe toward Europe was reproduced as representational condescension toward Sudanese.
• SEED: A ‘hierarchy of the gaze’: colonized Egyptians laughing at other colonized Sudanese offers an essay angle on lateral othering within colonial hierarchies.