A tiny village finds itself an onlooker in the scramble to free the Ever Given.
A view of the Ever Given from a village along the bank of the Suez Canal.
A view of the Ever Given from a village along the bank of the Suez Canal.Credit…Sima Diab for The New York Times

The gargantuan container ship that has stymied world trade by getting stuck in the Suez Canal has towered over Umm Gaafar’s dusty brick house for four days now, humming its deep mechanical churr.

She looked up from where she sat in the bumpy dirt lane and considered what the vessel, the Ever Given, might be carrying in all those containers. Flat-screen televisions? Full-sized refrigerators, washing machines or ceiling fans?

None of which she or her neighbors in the tiny Egyptian hamlet of Manshiyet Rugola, population 5,000-ish, has at home.

“Why don’t they pull out one of those containers?” she joked. “There could be something good in there. Maybe it could feed the town.”

The Japanese-owned Ever Given and the more than 300 cargo ships now waiting to traverse the Suez Canal, one of the world’s most critical shipping arteries, could supply Manshiyet Rugola many, many times over.

In the village, whose name translates to “Little Village of Manhood,” traffic jams of any kind would be difficult to imagine ordinarily.

Donkey carts piled high with clover bumped down semi-paved lanes between low brick houses and green fields lined with palm trees, trash and animal dung. A teenager hawked ice cream from his motorcycle. Roosters offered profane competition to the noontime call to prayer.

Until the Ever Given showed up, the minarets of the unimposing mosques were the tallest structures around.

“Do you want to see the ship?” a young boy asked a pair of visiting journalists, bobbing in excitement under the window of their car. Ever since the earthquake-like rumble of the ship running aground jolted many awake around 7 a.m. on Tuesday, the Ever Given has been the only topic in town.

“The whole village was out there watching,” said Youssef Ghareeb, 19, a factory worker. “We’ve gotten so used to having her around, because we’ve been living on our rooftops just watching the ship for four days.”

It was universally agreed that the view was even better at night, when the ship glowed with light: a skyscraper right out of a big-city skyline, lying on its side.

“When it lights up at night, it’s like the Titanic,” said Nadia, who, like her neighbor Umm Gaafar, declined to give her full name because of the security forces in the area. “All it’s missing is the necklace from the movie.”

Umm Gaafar had asked to go by her nickname so as not to run afoul of the government security personnel who had passed through, warning residents not to take photos of the canal and generally spreading unease.

Nadia said she was too intimidated to take pictures of the ship at night — though she very much wanted to.

— Vivian Yee The New York Times