38, Uber Eats, Brussels, February 2023

In the streets of Brussels, Sultan Zadran delivered meals, crossed neighbourhoods, braved the rain and the cold, before disappearing again into the flow of the city. On Thursday 2 February 2023, at 4.24pm, his run came to a brutal end at the junction of boulevard Albert II and boulevard Simon Bolivar, near the Gare du Nord station. He was 38.

Sultan’s story begins far from there, in the mountains of Afghanistan. Fleeing a country scarred by decades of war and the return of the Taliban, he had found refuge in Belgium ten years earlier. In a small flat in Saint-Gilles, a district of Brussels, he had rebuilt a semblance of a life, thousands of kilometres from his family.

Every day, every ride, every delivery was driven by one goal that consumed him: bringing his family to Belgium. His wife and five children, refugees in a camp in Pakistan, were waiting for the family reunification process to finally come through. At the time of the tragedy, he was almost there. His wife, pregnant with their sixth child, was soon to join him with the whole family. The baby, born in the summer of 2023, will never know his father. Today he bears his first name, Sultan, in tribute to the man he never had the chance to meet.

In the evenings, when he was not delivering, Sultan swapped his bike for a cricket bat. The sport, a national passion in Afghanistan, had become his anchor in his new life. A co-founder of the Brussels Warriors Cricket Club, he had led his team from the third to the second division in Belgium. The training grounds were his other home, where the young players he coached saw him as much more than a coach. Those who knew him describe a man with a big heart.

On that February Thursday, the sky hangs low over Brussels. Sultan is stopped at a red light, in his cycle lane, next to a large Flixbus coach. An ordinary scene of city life. The light turns green. The coach pulls away and turns right. The driver does not see the cyclist. In his blind spot, Sultan disappears.

The impact is violent. The courier is trapped under the wheels of the vehicle. Passers-by call the emergency services. Firefighters arrive quickly and have to deploy major equipment to free him: they saw through his bike and lift the back of the coach. Sultan is still conscious, screaming in pain. Rushed to the nearby Clinique Saint-Jean, he dies of his injuries shortly afterwards.

The coach that hit him had only two wing mirrors, though each was split into two glasses, according to Flixbus. Most other vehicles of this type have four, precisely to reduce the blind spots that turn streets into death traps. But Belgian law does not require this extra safety measure.

The junction where Sultan lost his life was known to be dangerous. A plan for a protected cycle lane had even been drawn up under the previous administration, before being abandoned after the municipality of Schaerbeek deemed it unnecessary. It took a man’s death for protective bollards to finally be installed three months later.

In the days that followed, his cricket teammates launched a fundraiser. The aim: to support his family financially, now deprived of its only source of income. More than €11,000 was raised, a drop in the ocean set against the distress of a widow and six fatherless children left behind in Pakistan.

At the end of September 2023, the verdict falls like a blade: the Brussels prosecutor’s office drops the case. The coach driver, who tested negative for alcohol and drugs, committed no offence. Flixbus complied with legal standards. Uber Eats is not legally responsible for the accident. No one will be prosecuted.

Haroon Munir Ud Din, a distant cousin of Sultan, called the decision shocking. The family had wanted a trial, he said: Sultan was the only source of income for his family, which depended on him entirely. A trial could have led to compensation for a family now left with nothing.

Uber Eats had promised financial assistance - not compensation, a distinction that reflects the absence of any acknowledgement of responsibility. But according to Sultan’s relatives, nine months after his death, that assistance had still not reached his family. Asked about it, the platform said it was working with the parties concerned to finalise the payment as soon as possible.

In a refugee camp in Pakistan, six children are growing up without their father. The eldest may still remember his voice on the phone. The youngest, who bears his name, will know him only through photos and stories.