Death in a Glasgow hotel: The last years of Badreddin Bosh

In 2017, a young man fled his village in Sudan. Through numerous countries and thousands of kilometres, he dreamed of a better future. Until his journey ended violently a year ago. But what had happened to Badreddin Abdallah Adam Bosh?

It was a Monday afternoon in January 2017 when Adam Abdallah Adam Bosh got the phone call. It was his younger brother Badreddin calling to tell him that his journey to Europe had begun. Adam was busy rebuilding the clay-brick wall of his family’s hut in Shoaib, the village where the two brothers had grown up together in Gadarif state in eastern Sudan. Because of rain and erosion in this rural part of the country, it is common for mud huts to require reconstruction every couple of years. But beyond necessity, the repetitive and time-consuming practice has also traditionally served a spiritual purpose. If a loved one was lost, it was believed the house had to be abandoned to cast away the evil spirit that had brought death to the family. As the structural, earthly materials would dissolve back into the soil, the family’s fate would be liberated from the evil spirit.