“The stenches make you feel bad,” a visitor quipped about Port Said in 1871. The Egyptian port-city, the Suez Canal’s northern harbor, had been hastily erected on reclaimed land after the excavation of the Canal had taken off in 1859. A number of different Egyptian and “foreign” communities led supposedly separate lives in its “Arab village” and its “European quarter.” Not only did technical difficulties affect the development of the town’s sewage system, but Port Said’s urban segregation also obstructed the system’s functioning. In the early stages of the town’s development, I argue, perceptions of dirt were contingent on ideas of social worth. Smell became yet another instrument to socially engineer the urban space. I approach Port Said as a site where local and global expertise and experience converged and at times clashed (cit. Gamal-Eldin). On the one hand, I examine the decade-long discussions and negotiations between the Suez Canal Company and the Egyptian administration, in their search for a solution to the town’s growing quantity of refuse. On the other hand, I take into consideration the lived experience of those dwelling in the port-city, dodging its trash, and skipping its filthy puddles. Overall, I explore the ways in which Port Said figured conspicuously within the Egyptian eco-system of smells. And I argue that the filth associated to some of its inhabitants depended on the class, “race,” and gender they seemingly belonged to. In sum, I write a social history of the technology uncoiling above and below the ground of Port Said. I rely on both archival and published sources gathered in my multi-sited fieldwork. On the heels of other historians’ lead, I question the role of vision and privilege olfaction in assessing changes in urban history. I thus hope to contribute to debates about sensory history that are mounting within and outside modern Middle East history. Moreover, by connecting the history of refusal disposal in Port Said with the history of sewage elsewhere, I approach Port Said and the Canal region comparatively.