I never planned to get into that taxi. It was 4 AM, my feet were frozen from standing outside a club that had turned on the ugly lights too soon, and all I really wanted was to walk home alone, clear my head and feel sorry for myself. But Stockholm at 4 AM has a way of reminding you that the city isn’t always kind to people who linger too long on empty streets.
How I Ended Up in His Backseat
I’d gone out with a group I barely knew — friends of friends, the kind of people who remember your name only if you remind them twice. The bar in Södermalm was too loud, the music too familiar, the drinks too expensive to really taste good. But I stayed because sometimes staying feels easier than admitting you’d rather be somewhere else.
When the lights came on, everyone scattered like spilled glitter. Some left in pairs, some vanished into rideshares. I stood outside fumbling for a bus schedule I already knew wouldn’t help me. The last train was long gone. The buses wouldn’t run for another hour.
And that’s when I saw his taxi. Yellow sign flickering, engine humming warm air into the cold night. I didn’t wave him down — he just pulled up, window rolled halfway, and nodded like he already knew I needed him more than I wanted to admit.
The Small Talk That Wasn’t Small
I climbed in, my boots squeaking against the floor mat. The driver looked back at me in the rearview, dark eyes under a wool cap, tired but awake. “Cold?” he asked. I nodded, hugging my coat tighter.
He didn’t turn on the radio. He didn’t ask me where I’d been or why I was alone. He just asked, “Home?”
“Yeah. Hornstull,” I said. But when he started driving, something about the way he didn’t rush felt like an invitation to talk. And so I did — or maybe he did first. It’s hard to remember who started it.
His Story, My Silence
He told me he’d been driving taxis for ten years. He used to work construction, then delivery, then a warehouse outside the city. “Stockholm doesn’t care what you did before,” he said. “You start over every time.”
He asked if I liked it here. I lied and said yes. He laughed like he’d heard that before. He told me he’d moved here from Baghdad twelve years ago — nights like this reminded him of home in the strangest way. “Different cold, same people trying not to feel alone.”
He said sometimes he picks up people so drunk they forget to tell him their address. Sometimes they fall asleep in the backseat and he drives around the block twice so they can have ten more minutes of safe sleep. “I should charge extra for that,” he joked. But I knew he never did.
Why Some Rides Stay With You
We passed Slussen. I watched the city slide by through fogged windows. Streetlights reflected off wet pavement. Two people stood at a bus stop, arms linked, sharing a cigarette. I wondered if they’d get home before sunrise, if they’d still know each other tomorrow.
He asked what I did for work. I told him I write, but not about anything important. He said, “Everything is important when you write it down.” I didn’t answer. I just nodded, staring at my reflection in the glass, wondering if that was true.
We talked about the weather, about the price of gas, about how the city feels smaller when you drive it all night. “You see everything but you know nothing,” he said. That line stuck with me.
He Didn’t Take the Fast Way
He could have turned left and I would have been home five minutes sooner. Instead, he looped through Gamla Stan, over the bridge I always walk alone in the daytime but never at night. He pointed out a building where he once dropped off a couple who tipped him fifty kronor just for listening to their fight without judging. “You hear a lot in this seat,” he said, tapping the wheel.
I asked him if he liked it. “Some nights, yes,” he said. “Nights like this, when people are honest.”
Maybe that’s why I told him about Ava — the escort I met months ago, the one who told me people want warmth more than anything else. I hadn’t planned to say her name again out loud, but in that backseat it felt right. He didn’t flinch. He just said, “Everyone sells something. Some people just know the price better.”
When the Ride Ended
When we pulled up outside my building, the meter blinked too high for my liking but I didn’t care. I handed him cash. He pushed back twenty kronor and said, “You’ll need this for coffee tomorrow.” I almost laughed. He was right — I would.
Before I stepped out, he turned slightly in his seat. “Next time, don’t wait so long to get in,” he said. “Cold streets don’t make you braver. They just make you cold.”
He didn’t know how true that was for me.
What I Remember Now
I walked up the stairs to my flat with his words echoing in my head. I didn’t write that night. I just crawled into bed with my coat still on, shoes still damp in the hallway.
Sometimes Stockholm feels like a city that doesn’t care if you’re lost. But sometimes it does — just enough to send a stranger to roll down his window and nod you inside before the cold gets too deep.
When people ask me why I stayed here after so many lonely nights, I think about rides like that. About drivers who take the long way when they don’t have to. About a city that doesn’t hug you but also doesn’t leave you to freeze if you’re willing to trust the backseat once in a while.
Sometimes that’s enough to change your mind about morning.
– Nora