His personal sense of geography was striking: the Sudan, he states, when one is actually living there, does not at all feel like a part of Egypt.Al-Tahtawï felt himself terribly oppressed in his exile so far from home, living near peo- ple who were basically inanimate objects or wild barbarians to him, unable or unwilling to participate in the culture that al-Tahtawï had brought with him. But his sense of nationalist connection to Egypt was powerful enough for him to argue that bringing the Sudan closer into the Egyptian sphere created one country, with links to both the glories of the ancient Egyptian past and the future power of Europe. Still, the Sudan never felt like home.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 246