Kuba talks about himself and his life in short, broken sentences. I draw one simple statement after another out of him, but they are specific. Where he lived, what work he looked for, how many siblings he has. I wonder how to ask questions without suggesting anything to him. We sit on a bench in front of the shelter for homeless people in Bolesławiec. Kuba is wearing a warm honey-colored jacket. He received it as a gift. He likes it. He agrees to be photographed in it. He is open, smiles and wants to talk, but only because his self-appointed guardian, Mrs Agnieszka, announced me. Kuba does not trust strangers. It is a basic rule of survival. As Agnieszka says, Kuba is afraid of the court, the police, his father and his mother.
I ask Kuba about his plans and dreams. I immediately hear that he wants to become a professional boxer. I learn that on the afternoon of the day we meet, Kuba has his first training session. I go there to see him.
The gymnasium of the Zespół Szkół Elektronicznych on Bielska Street is austere, with décor from the 1970s: a wooden floor, wall bars, and boxing speed bags and heavy bags hanging on one side. During training, mirrors are brought out from the back room. There is no ring. Coach Tomasz Tomczyk stipulates that he does not want to complain, but a ring is his dream, even a surplus one. Anything so that the athletes training at TOP Boks Bolesławiec can become accustomed to the ring, because it is difficult for them to fight athletes who train in a ring all the time. Coach Tomasz is the son of Bolesławiec boxer Ryszard Tomczyk, a gold medalist at the 1971 European Championships in Madrid.
I enter the gym and see that training is in full swing. I look for Kuba. There he is. He smiles at me but does not interrupt his training. Like all the young men exercising, he is deeply committed to the workout. It is his first time and his movements are still very awkward, but the coach praises Kuba above all for his perseverance.
“This is the first training session,” says Tomasz Tomczyk. “Kuba wanted to see what professional training is like. You cannot say much yet, but Kuba made it through the warm-up, he made it through the exercises…” The coach breaks off and shouts to the athletes, “Switch!” He instructs them and supervises the training. In fact, he never takes his eyes off the athletes. It is clear that this is his great passion.
The group trains intensely, with short breaks to drink water. Kuba likes the techniques he tries. He puts on boxing gloves for the first time. He hits the training bag. The coach knows the boy lacks technique, but emphasizes that boxing is a sport that teaches not only agility and coordination, but is also an energetic discipline. I can see that. Tomasz Tomczyk is a powerful man, but when he demonstrates exercises for the boys, you can see how fast, agile and active he is. I leave Kuba at the gym. In two days, on Sunday, I will ask him how he liked it. He is still full of energy and says he will attend the training sessions and that he has no muscle soreness at all.
Round One: A Homeless Life
Not everyone receives an ultimatum from their parents for their eighteenth birthday: get a job or I will throw you out of the house. Kuba turns 18 in April 2022. He receives just such an ultimatum from his mother. His mother lives with him, her new partner and Kuba’s younger siblings: a sister who attends boarding school and Kuba’s eleven-year-old brother.
Kuba tells me that he found his first job himself. At a bakery in one of the villages near Bolesławiec. But he worked there for perhaps two days. The owner decided that Kuba was not suited to working as a baker, that he might hurt himself or someone else. Then Kuba and his mother went to Bader, but there too, after a trial period of about a month, Kuba was not hired permanently. The work at Bader is fast-paced and paid by output; Kuba is unable to do it. It seems this exhausts his mother’s patience. From what I manage to establish with Kuba, in July his mother drives her adult son to the Warta Bolesławiecka Commune Office, where she makes him deregister from the apartment in Szczytnica. I ask Kuba why he agreed to deregister.
“I thought that person would keep harassing me and sending the police, so it would be better if I deregistered,” Kuba replies Kuba.
Kuba agreed to talk about his mother, but insisted on calling her “that person.” Agnieszka and I, at whose home Kuba spent the weekend, try to dissuade him from this idea. We know too little about Kuba’s mother and her life to pass unequivocal judgments. We also have many questions about the boy’s father, who does not appear in this story very often. And from what Kuba says, he has not lived with his mother since they came to Poland from England.
“When we came back from the office, that person said I had half an hour to leave the house,” Kuba tells me, and suddenly it turns out that this term for his mother may fit the situation. “I took my backpack, clothes, trousers and sweatshirt and left,” says Kuba (and there is a kind of childish pride in it: he holds his head high, shakes it, wants to show that it did not affect him at all that he was thrown out of the house by that person).
However, immediately after this conversation, Kuba asks Agnieszka to let him go into the other room because his head hurts. The emotions are truly intense. It is difficult to listen to Kuba’s story.
“At first I had the urge to talk to that woman, mother to mother,” says Agnieszka. “To ask whether she knows where her homeless son lives. When Kuba told me where he had found a place after being thrown out of the house, I was carrying so much emotion that I went out to the back room so I would not cry in front of him. I could not imagine a person in that place. If my cat spent one night there, I would have a problem with myself, let alone a child. But the more information I gathered about Kuba, the harder it became for me to meet and talk to his mother,” Agnieszka adds more quietly.
Kuba easily found an abandoned building because he had played in Szczytnica as a child. At the time he still lived in England, where his parents worked, but they came to Szczytnica for holidays. Kuba knew the town and its nooks and crannies. The entire family returned to Poland three years ago. Now, after being thrown out of the house, he planned to walk to England, or even farther, but in the end he said he did not feel like it. His naivety disarmed me.
Despite the terrible conditions in the abandoned building, Kuba stayed there and looked for food near restaurants. Szczytnica is a place near a motorway. Truck drivers gave him soup vouchers, and Roma women who sold phones in the parking lot also helped him. They were deeply moved by the homeless boy’s plight. They supported him as best they could. The boy and Agnieszka especially remember the warmth and helpfulness of Carmen.
Eventually Agnieszka becomes Kuba’s self-appointed guardian, and another battle takes place here.
Round Two: Agnieszka and the Social Welfare Centre in Warta Bolesławiecka
Agnieszka, whom I visit at her apartment in Szczytnica, welcomes me warmly. She is a petite, delicate woman with large, dark eyes attractively framed. She works 12-hour shifts at one of the restaurants near the motorway. She was the only person to take care of Kuba. She was the one who set the entire media circus in motion. She called TVN Uwaga for help. She is grateful to the journalists for their assistance, but also tired of the media noise.
Agnieszka decided to find Kuba a place in a homeless shelter. She called the Social Welfare Centre (OPS) in Warta Bolesławiecka, to which Szczytnica belongs. The first contact with a social worker, whom we will call Olga, was not satisfactory in Mrs Agnieszka’s opinion. Agnieszka informed Olga about the homeless boy, but the official allegedly refused to search for the homeless person in abandoned buildings. The official also allegedly firmly refused Agnieszka’s proposal to meet the homeless Kuba at her apartment.
Eventually Agnieszka drove Kuba to the OPS in her own car. It was the beginning of September. Agnieszka received documents that had to be submitted to the District Office so that Kuba could apply for a possible disability classification and the pension to which it would entitle him.
The official information from the OPS received by our editorial office in September read:
Kuba came to our OPS on Friday, September 9, 2022. He presented his life situation to us. He did not have any documentation concerning his health with him. He stated that he was sleeping in an abandoned building. We offered him accommodation at a homeless shelter in Bolesławiec. He signed his consent. We initiated the procedure for preparing documents to obtain a disability certificate for Kuba. This would provide the basis for offering him broader support under the Social Welfare Act. We contacted Kuba’s mother, who came to our centre and presented her son’s situation. Today, a conversation was held with Kuba’s father, who is to call us. The social worker also spoke with the court probation officer about Kuba. At present, the social worker, together with the police, has gone to Szczytnica to assess the situation.
Elżbieta Żerdzińska, Head of the Municipal Social Welfare Centre in Warta Bolesławiecka
Agnieszka does not believe that the social worker Olga treated her and Kuba with due diligence. She felt throughout that Olga treated her like an intruder. She felt that neither Olga nor anyone else at the OPS cared about Kuba’s situation. This feeling of helplessness and lack of response drove Agnieszka to call the media for help.
“I am at work when I hear shouting,” Agnieszka recounts. “Someone is calling me. They say the police are there, Kuba is there and I am needed. Mrs Olga arrived with the police to take Kuba to the shelter. But that was after TVN Uwaga had arrived. Kuba was afraid of strangers, and especially of the police. He would not have got into a police car for anything. I said I would go with him. He felt safe with me. And so, with the cameras, we placed Kuba in the shelter,” Agnieszka concludes with a smile.
Elżbieta Żerdzińska, head of the OPS, denies that journalists influenced the decision to place Kuba in the shelter and address the case of the homeless 18-year-old. I have no reason not to believe her words are sincere. The head speaks about procedures and Jakub’s complicated situation. The district shelter has four places for the Warta Bolesławiecka commune, and the commune pays PLN 10,000 a year for them. Homeless people who apply to the shelter and whose last registered address was in the Warta Bolesławiecka commune must be assigned appropriately. The head of the OPS also says that homeless people are required to register with the Employment Office and allocate 30% of their income, whatever it may be, toward the shelter fee. Kuba cannot meet this obligation for now.
The head also writes to the istotne.pl editorial office that, for the OPS officials, Agnieszka is not a party to the case and they are not obliged to cooperate with her. When I say that only Agnieszka took an interest in Kuba’s fate, because neither his father, mother nor siblings helped him, the director agrees with me. But she quickly adds that Kuba is someone who inspires trust in people, and even pity, but does nothing for himself. We do not pursue this subject, however. I would have to ask why Kuba’s parents did not do what Agnieszka did for their son, and we both know there is no answer here. I merely remind her that although Agnieszka is not a party to the case, she did receive documents that must be submitted to the District Office so that a possible commission could grant Kuba a disability classification. The head replies that anyone can download such documents. Kuba’s mother downloaded them too. The OPS can check whether they are submitted to the District Office and who submitted them. We end the conversation there.
Round Three: Application to Place Kuba in a Psychiatric Hospital
I meet Jakub’s representative, attorney Justyna Olechnowicz, in her office. We do not discuss the case currently pending before the family court, but I ask about Kuba’s legal situation.
“An application was filed in the case (by Jakub’s mother and the OPS in Warta Bolesławiecka—editor’s note) to place the participant in the proceedings (Jakub—editor’s note) in a psychiatric hospital under Article 29 of the Mental Health Protection Act,” says attorney Justyna Olechnowicz, Jakub’s representative. “Under this act, a person may be admitted to a psychiatric hospital without their consent if they are mentally ill or intellectually disabled, unable to meet their basic life needs, and it is reasonable to expect that treatment in a psychiatric hospital will improve their health. At this point, no decision has yet been made in the case. The next hearing date has been set ex officio; the court will probably admit evidence from a supplementary or second expert opinion. In accordance with the wishes of the participant in the proceedings (Jakub—editor’s note), I oppose placing him in a psychiatric hospital,” the representative adds.
Kuba does not want to go to a psychiatric hospital. After several suicide attempts, he was placed in psychiatric wards, including a ward in Bolesławiec. The reports from his hospital stays are positive: after admission, he has problems following the regulations and is restless, but over time he calms down and complies.
In the interview that medical staff conducted by telephone with his mother in May 2021, Kuba was described as a child who had caused problems from an early age. The phrase “he was always sitting on the punishment cushion” appears in the interview. I do not know what this could mean, because Kuba told me that as a small child he knelt on rice as punishment. One image stayed with me. Kuba described how the whole family sat in the living room watching television while he had to kneel on rice in the corner as punishment. When I ask what he was punished for, he says sometimes for nothing, and sometimes for failing to put his things away in the wardrobe. Then his father would throw those things out of the bedroom window into the garden or onto the stairwell. Kuba had to keep arranging his clothes until his father decided they were satisfactory. According to Kuba, his father’s own clothes were always arranged very carefully in his wardrobe, and he arranged them himself.
In Kuba’s mother’s assessment, her son is disobedient, lazy, unwilling to do anything at home, impressionable, disobedient, aggressive, and steals to obtain cigarettes, which he has smoked since the age of 15. He ran away from home many times. He was difficult for his siblings.
I walk around Szczytnica with Kuba. It is a beautiful, sunny day. Kuba asks if he can smoke a cigarette through a holder. I say I do not mind. The boy plays his favorite tracks for me: hip-hop and rap. Young musicians rhythmically shout out their sorrow at the world, their pain, their rejection of human wickedness, and their devotion to their brothers. In their lyrics they describe a cruel world in which love, loyalty, brotherhood and respect are very rare treasures.
Kuba leads me to his mother’s block of flats. That person. He shows me the apartment windows. He asks whether I want to enter the stairwell. I agree. We stand in front of the door to his former apartment. On the new door, chalk symbols read K + M + B = 2022. I think this family should lack neither the material resources to support Kuba nor the moral guidance needed to care for a boy with a disability. Kuba merely approaches his mother’s apartment door and asks me not to knock. We go downstairs. Once again, we are in the sunlight. A dozen or so metres farther on, the boy points out his father’s apartment. He also shows me the car his father drives.
After this sad walk, we return to Agnieszka’s home listening to rappers singing about lost illusions and a loveless world. Suddenly a car passes us. I notice a pretty teenage girl in a black head covering looking through the lowered window. Kuba stops, turns around and watches the car that has passed us. I think he wants to find one more song for me, which is why he stopped, but he says that his mother and her partner have just passed us, and that the girl in the car window was his sister.
I wait for him to calm down because he is deeply moved. So am I, because the car did not stop. It passed us like strangers. The girl did not even move when she saw her brother. And Kuba, I suddenly notice, forgot himself and said “mother” instead of “that person.”
Grażyna Hanaf