Interwar Egyptian drama framed nationalism as inheritable through blood

Evidence

The play thus revolves on the genetics of nationalism. Nationalism is a blood matter, as shown by Oshaka when she realizes that she is the daughter of parents from a country she had long considered to be enemy territory. It is hard for her to answer for her misdeeds, as she tells the sympathetic Osman, who is the first to figure out where she is really from: Oshaka: I worked against my own nationality [jinsïyatï, followed in the manuscript by watanï, which is crossed out]. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 919

Categorization

• DEFINE: Exemplifies how nationalist belonging was conceived as biological/genetic rather than civic in this Egyptian cultural context.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s comparative coloniality question — a blood-based national identity speaks to how Egyptians and Sudanese were differentially categorized.
• QUESTION: Was this blood-based nationalism a borrowed European romantic-nationalist framing, or did it serve a specific internal-racial purpose vis-a-vis Nubians and Sudanese?