Egyptian writers stereotyped Sudanese as comic servants despite demanding realism.

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

• DEEPTHINKING: The double standard — Egyptians demanding realist self-representation from Europe while denying it to Sudan — is a precise microcosm of layered coloniality the reader is hunting for.
• XREF: The core contrast for the reader’s stated goal: Egyptian anti-colonial self-consciousness coexisting with colonial-style representation of Sudan. Echoes Things Fall Apart’s theme of representation and internalized hierarchy.
• SEED: Potential essay angle: ‘the contagious hierarchy’ — how colonized peoples reproduce the colonizer’s representational violence against their own peripheries.