These soldiers were rarely men of letters. Unlike the beliefs of nationalist writers and publicists Yaqüb Sanüa and Abdallah al-Nadïm, or the newspaper editor Alï Yusuf who wrote pages and pages on the issue of the Sudan and its meaning for Egypt, the soldiers’ perspectives on the Egyptian experience in the Sudan remained a subject for letters sent home. The living military memory of the Sudan circulated, but only privately, until Ibrahïm Fawzï published his memoirs.

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 514