When the container ship went aground in the middle of the Suez,we all paid a price. The Japanese owner, under a Panamanian flag, Taiwaneseoperator, German manager and Indian crew, stalled in Egyptian waters. A shiptoo large to imagine, laden with the mundane and the necessary, our hungerfor things fed by people we will never meet, with families who are always waiting.
All vessels have names, even a container ship whose utilitarian appearancedoes not elicit poetry. Ever Given. Blood oranges, mahogany, lemons,coconut milk, computer parts, nails. Behind the grounded ship, smallerships filled with cattle, deemed “excess,” entombed and transportednot to populate, as after the Great Flood, but to die. They lowedin their boat coffins, and on the walls pharaohs and slaves, deities,jackals, cats and crocodiles turned slightly towards the lowingas Hathor, briefly, shut her cow eyes.
The complexity of the voyage might cause one to sit,for a moment, and consider thatour lives pass through many hands,and every vessel has a name.