Nubian characters in Egyptian popular theater embodied nationalist truth despite mocking of their blackness.

Evidence

This love of country is in the blood. Although Osman the Nubian is always answering for his blackness, he is the one who shows the other characters and the audience the truth about nationalism. He is once more the Nubian defender of the Egyptian heartland, speaking and singing in a language that all Egyptians could understand, about the meaning, duties, and responsibilities of being an Egyptian. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 930

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the complaisant/compliant dimension of the reader’s own framing — how subaltern figures are made to voice the nationalist claims of the dominant polity, parallel to patterns in Naqvi’s Home Boy where immigrant identity performs belonging.