This really happened to me, and in my experience it’s not unusual.

I was in Washington DC on a visit to my older daughter and her family. Mostly when I’m there I take the Metro, but sometimes I need an Uber. On this trip, on a sunny Saturday morning, I called for one. It arrived quickly, black Ford Escape, a few years old, black upholstery, clean inside.

Once I was buckled in and we were underway, I began a conversation, as I like to do, with the driver. The Uber app stated our names, but I introduced myself anyway, saying that my name was Bill and that I was from Boston.

“Your name is Hassan?”

“Yes, that’s my name, thank you.”

I said a few things about the weather and the traffic and then asked Hassan when he’d started that morning. “I started at six today,” he told me. He was wearing a blue sweatshirt with a hood, sleeves pushed up.

We chatted some more. I said to him: “My friend, your English is perfect. Where are you from?” He told me he was from Lebanon, and that he’d been in the U.S. for five years.

From behind, I noticed Hassan’s broad back and shoulders. I guessed he was about thirty. I asked him how many days a week he worked.

“Seven,” he said, from early in the morning to mid-afternoon.

“Do you have another job besides Uber?”

Hassan replied that he’s a musician, guitar and bass, and that when he finds a student or two, he gives lessons. I could feel his connection to his instruments, the rise in his tone of voice. He listens to all types of music, especially jazz, Miles Davis, John Coltrane.

We talked about foreign languages. Hassan’s native languages are Arabic and French. I said I’d been told that Arabic is hard to learn, and he explained the differences between spoken and written Arabic, and the dialects in various Middle Eastern countries.

Hassan said he’s teaching himself German.

“Why is that?”

“I’m interested in philosophy. My favorite is Nietzsche.”

I asked which of Nietzsche’s books he enjoyed the most. His first big discovery was The Birth of Tragedy. He also rereads and studies Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals.

Hassan reads these books in Arabic translations but wants to read them in German, “the original they were written in.” He prefers to read slowly, thinking carefully about each sentence before moving to the next one. He looks forward to sections where it’s difficult to figure out the meaning. This pleases him, he explained, “it’s fun, stretching my mind.”

I asked whether he was familiar with The Gay Science.

“Oh yes, that’s the road map, that’s what life is, it’s all about eternal recurrence, that’s something everybody should be thinking about.”

Hassan appreciates the freedom he gets from being an Uber driver. His schedule is flexible; he can change it if he needs to. He provides the vehicle and pays for the gas, maintenance, and insurance. There’s no organization, no union. Uber drivers are on their own.

We were nearing my destination. He mentioned he was eager to learn more about Nietzsche’s life and the philosophers he influenced. He has started Heidegger’s Being and Time. It’s tough-going but he’s determined.

I told Hassan I was a literature teacher and had a wife, two daughters, and five grandchildren. He congratulated me on my good fortune.

When we arrived, I said I’d enjoyed his company. As I slid over to get out of the car, I caught a glimpse of his face as he turned toward me: brown eyes and a kind expression. I wished Hassan the best and said he’d made me want to look again at my Nietzsche books.

I had fun that day with my grandchildren. We hung out for a while at their house. The older one, age nine, had a swimming lesson we went to, and the younger one had a soccer game. Then we walked to a playground, where they kept busy on climbing structures, ropes, and swings.

Later, I visited with my daughter while the kids ate dinner. As daylight faded, it was time for me to head back to the hotel where I was staying.

I ordered an Uber, and one came in a couple minutes: a white Toyota sedan, a little worn inside. I settled in and clicked the seatbelt. The driver gave me a warm greeting. He was wearing a white shirt. I couldn’t see his face.

Uber had notified me that this driver was named Ahmed. For the second time that day, I said, “My friend, your English is perfect. Could I ask where you’re from?”

“From Iraq,” Ahmed said. He has been in the U.S. for thirty years; he has a wife and twin girls, age twelve. He does some financial advising and consulting when he can, but his main job is six days a week for Uber, afternoons and evenings, returning home at midnight.

I told Ahmed about my visit in the morning with Hassan, which led us into foreign languages. Ahmed speaks Arabic and Farsi. He’s fluent in French. He and his wife speak Kurdish at home.

“Ahmed, how did you learn English?”

“You learn a language when you need to, when you have to pick it up for work or where you live, to get around and talk with people in the country where you are. And then you read books and try to get better.”

“What books?”, I asked.

“I’m interested in German philosophy, books on that subject.”

“Which German philosophers do you read?”

“Kant, Hegel, Marx, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche.”

He added he knows he should read Wittgenstein and Heidegger, but “I feel I can get more out of my older philosophers. I’m not at the end of what they have to teach me.”

“I read Nietzsche in the kitchen early in the morning,” Ahmed continued. “And I have philosophy audiobooks and podcasts I listen to in the car when I let someone off and drive to my next ride.” He likes feeling he’s learning and thinking during the long hours behind the wheel.

It was dark when we reached the hotel. I thanked Ahmed and wished him well for the night. For a moment, I saw his face: brown eyes, short brown hair, some gray in it.

Not all my Uber drivers are close readers. But all of them have busy, challenging, and complicated lives. They have relationships and histories; they have desires, goals, and responsibilities. They’re making their way in the world, and I benefit from talking with them. They lift my spirits.

And then they’re gone. That’s the only time we’ll ever speak.

William E. Cain is Mary Jewett Gaiser Professor of English at Wellesley College, where he enjoys teaching courses on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and other American writers. His recent publications include essays on Edith Wharton and Ernest Hemingway.

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