Mubarak’s Africa scene mirrors the Egyptian boy’s objectification in France

Evidence

James tells his story to cheer up his cotravelers, after Burhan al-Dïn describes a heartbreaking experience at the theater in Marseilles, where a group of women ogled him for hours during a performance. His selfconsciousness touches his father and makes the entire group thoughtful, until James tries to distract them with his entertaining tale. … James tried for weeks to survive on his own, but loneliness so overwhelmed him that he finally forced himself to approach some nearby huts, bringing his gun with him. A visiting chief took a liking to him and conducted him through miles and miles of territory, until the fourth day, when we finally arrived at a small village. All of the people were black and lived in huts, and we spent the night. I found myself surrounded by slaves [`abïd], who rushed around me like I was some kind of miracle or strange being; they came from every corner and quarter—young, old, male, female—they all came to stare at me. Women came even closer than the men, and a group surrounded me speaking their foreign language that I couldn’t understand. At first I was scared, but then I got used to it and tolerated it for the rest of the day and the night. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 279

Categorization

• QUESTION: Why does Mubarak spend two hundred pages on Africa as a shipwreck tale he invented, treating Africans as wonder-struck at a white man, while his own son was the exoticized spectacle in Europe?