At half past four in the morning, the group waiting for provisional passports has already self-organised, with a leader and a list setting down the order in which they arrived.

Sanna Mohammed gestures to where I should set my chair and goes through the system, double checking that everyone has been recorded.

“It’s because all of us have been waiting the whole night, so we made a list because we didn’t want people who come after us to push in front,” she says.

Arrived at 4am at passport queue in Malmö to find queue members had self-organised with a leader, a list of people, and agreed rules favouring those with travel tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/PR2eYxUC6V

— richard_orange (@Richard_Orange) June 14, 2022

There are about a dozen people huddled under the brutalist concrete porch of the police passport office in Malmö, hoping to get their hands on the single-use pink passports which represent their last chance of travelling to see relatives or going on holiday this week. 

Mohammad has been waiting since 6.30pm. Others have come in dribs and drabs throughout the night.

There’s a surprising amount of solidarity. I come dressed for a summer’s day and was shivering within half an hour, so Derik Lindbeck, one of my fellow queuers, lends me a blanket. When I start running out of phone battery, another queuer presents me with a fully loaded power bank (she’s brought three). 

I made the mistake of believing it was summer so need no jacket. Someone has lent me a blanket. pic.twitter.com/rpYVb9Yr2b

— richard_orange (@Richard_Orange) June 14, 2022

It’s one of those rare chances (along with IKEA) to experience the full spectrum of Malmö’s population, although those waiting are perhaps slightly skewed towards first and second-generation immigrants, who are presumably both more likely to travel and perhaps a little less likely to have gotten around to renewing their passports during the pandemic.

Looking at the queue, I’m at first quite optimistic, but then I discover that when the office closed at 7pm the day before, the 50 people waiting were given queue numbers which they could use when it opened again.

When the guards arrive, half of those on the list have not yet arrived, so theoretically should lose their places. But, to the frustration of those who have been waiting all night, as the late ones arrive over the next few hours, they all talk their way in anyway.

“It hasn’t worked. They’re letting people in who they shouldn’t let in,” Mohammad complains despondently. “They promised that they would follow the list from yesterday but it’s all gone wrong.”

• READ MORE: How to get a provisional Swedish passport in time for the summer hols

The guards, smiling and good natured, do an admirable job of calming us all down. They’re also managing the queue for those coming to pick up passports already ordered, which snakes around the grass verge in front of the building and then about 50m up the road. 

It’s midday before the first of those who’ve waited all night start to be let in, and the guards are uncertain of the chances of those who weren’t on Mohammad’s list.

“We’re screwed,” concludes Lindbeck, who grew up in Sweden with an English mother. “We’re here all the way till Sunday. There’s no way we’re getting in today.”

The queuing is mostly exemplary, apart from from one chancer who repeatedly tries to slip under the cordon. Eventually, the guards let him in to go to the toilet, and when, an hour later, he still hasn’t reemerged, the crowd starts harassing them to check up on him. When he finally comes out clutching a pink passport, there’s an eruption of anger, one of only two times tempers boil over the whole day. 

“This is hard, you know, it’s not easy,” the guard says, and manages to defuse the situation. 

When the two guards who came in the morning end their shift, I find myself in the position Sara Mohammad had, and soon I’m surrounded by people jostling to have their names written down on a page from my notebook. Everyone is agreed on their place, so soon the list is handed to the guards, who transcribe it onto their own. 

When I get it back, people grab it to take pictures of it, just to make sure no interlopers manage to talk their way in. 

Before the morning guards leave, they promise us that everyone on the list will be first in the queue if they are back by 7am, when the office reopens. This is good news, as we’d been worried we’d have to queue the whole night. But almost no one leaves, as everyone is still holding out a hope, however slim, of coming home with that precious pink passport. 

When a guard from the new shift starts speaking Arabic to one of those queueing, a woman bursts out, “what are you telling them. This is Sweden. All information should be given in Swedish.”

“But this isn’t information for everyone, I’m just answering the questions they have and some people don’t speak good Swedish,” the guard replies, leaving the woman muttering angrily. 

As it becomes clearer that not that many more of us are going to get in, the tension starts to rise. A woman bursts into tears after she reaches the front of the queue only to find that her children — the ones who need the passports — have not yet arrived. The guard tells her she can’t come in without them, and will lose her place. But those queuing agree that she can keep it, and he eventually relents. 

As the creator of the list, I have gained semi-official status, so I keep getting questions about what the chances are of getting a passport if you’re, say, number eleven, or number 18. I’m number three, and I rate my chances at less than 50 percent. 

But just as I’m starting to give up, it suddenly looks like the first four or five of us, at the very least, are going to get in. I ring my wife, to find that our daughter is at a friend’s house, and our son in the park, sparking a race to collect them and speed across the city. 

Just ten minutes before my time comes up, they finally arrive and in we go, exhausted but elated, along with the four people — one Brit, two ethnic Swedes (one half English) a Kurd, and an Arab – I’ve been queueing with for the last fourteen hours. 

As we emerge half an hour later grinning, clutching our pink passports, and clasp hands, I feel like there’s a bond, like we’re comrades in arms or a victorious football team.