"I went wandering around the city in search of myself." An interview with a Belarusian who disappeared in Catalonia for a month in summer

This summer, relatives lost contact with Belarusian Hienadź Smaliak. He left the house in Barcelona where he was living and did not answer his phone. Hienadź was searched for a month. His ex-wife Marta told Svaboda that acquaintances sometimes saw Smaliak near Barcelona, but he did not want to talk to them and left. The Belarusian disappeared on June 19. It became known from his ex-wife on July 18 that he had been found and admitted to the hospital.

Hienadź Smaliak is 36 years old. In Minsk, he worked as an orderly in psychoneurological boarding home No. 3. Additionally, he volunteered there, organized musical performances for residents, conducted art therapy, and introduced things that were previously absent from the institution: trips to the city, excursions, free access to drinking water, televisions in wards, and the possibility for volunteers to visit these people. When, according to him, "people began to come alive," the new head of the boarding home canceled the innovations, and Smaliak resigned with a scandal.

After 2020, Hienadź left Belarus. He lived in Ukraine, Poland, Germany, and Spain. Abroad, he worked as a journalist for various publications and received an award for a text about migrants on the Belarusian-Polish border.

Went to find himself

During the conversation with Hienadź, it is sometimes difficult to understand whether he is serious, joking, or ironic. He asks the interlocutor not to smile, as the conversation is serious. But he himself smiles almost all the time. He says he cannot live without a smile, striving to always have one. He emphasizes that he is a Buddhist. And he regularly returns to this topic, no matter what questions are being discussed. He shares the rules of Buddhism and uses many religious terms.

"At this current pivotal moment of our historical time, when some regimes are leaving and others are coming, I feel quite excellent. I have no worries. I believe in the stars," Hienadź says in a conversation with Svaboda about how he feels now.

Hienadź is currently in a migrant camp in a Polish village. Before this, he lived with friends in an abandoned house near Barcelona for six months.

"It's a cultural center where people of different nationalities, cultures, and ideologies gather with the aim of uniting," the Belarusian recalls.

But one day he got tired of it, and Hienadź walked towards Barcelona. "I realized that I had finished my rock and roll youth. Because sometimes you have to grow old when you understand that all roads are visible and all lead, excuse me, to some ass. I went to Spain to find myself, to review my life experience. And I went wandering around the city in search of myself," says Smaliak.

According to Hienadź's calculations, he wandered for three months. His relatives believe it lasted about one month. In his wanderings, Smaliak says, he learned "a lot of new, wonderful, and unforgettable things," "managed to weave his life into a complete pattern-tangle," and found himself.

"It's worth a lot — to find yourself, go through all hardships, talk to everyone, smile and move on," he notes.

In response to the question of what it means to have found himself, Hienadź returns to an earlier time and recalls how he came to Buddhism. One day he read a Buddhist book, watched films about Buddhist monks, then saw them live, "their kind, sincere eyes" — and realized that it resonated with him. He says that he still follows the Buddhist path and adheres to the basic rules of Buddhism. The man adds that his meditation is walking.

Hienadź notes that as a result of his wanderings, he gained peace and a feeling that he was right about certain things he had previously doubted. He adds that he quit his previous addictions and stopped using drugs.

But during his wanderings, Smaliak, according to him, lost his belongings and documents — his Belarusian passport and his Polish residence permit card.

He suffered sunstroke, his blood sugar dropped, and he had heart problems, which led him to the hospital. In the Belarusian consulate in Spain, Hienadź continues his story, they issued him a certificate so he could return to Belarus. But Smaliak flew with it to Poland. There he applied for international protection and is now awaiting a decision.

While Hienadź was wandering, his relatives were looking for him, contacting the police, and media published news about the Belarusian's disappearance. Smaliak himself says that when he was shown the publications and photos of the search, he thought it was Photoshop: "Who could be looking for me? Posts with my photos." And he even quarreled because his relatives had started the search. In the end, Hienadź admits — he was pleased that people cared about him. And he concludes that people should be searched for when they get lost.

Павялічыць

"I wish I were looking for you, and not you for me. I found my whole family along the way, remembered my brothers back to some generation. I figured out who stands where, how life works, how important family is, who in our family is a bit of a black sheep, like me, who in our family is a good guy, like my brother. I was looking for them, and I found them," the interlocutor reflects.

Changed diapers for the sick, restored documents for the homeless

Living in Minsk, Hienadź helped the homeless restore documents, changed diapers for people with disabilities, and helped drug addicts. He notes that Buddhists love people and strive for others to be well, but they "do not impose good."

"I am a Belarusian punk, an antifascist. For me, the first thing was social revolution... I think that every person has the right to a second chance and to return to a normal life. We all make mistakes along the way. I made many mistakes, and it cost me dearly to start a normal life anew," he explains why he helped vulnerable groups. The interlocutor recalls that he did a great job in the psychoneurological boarding home in Minsk, where he worked as an orderly. Among the changes he achieved was that the boarding home residents began to receive more drinking water.

"With the disabled, it was sad. I had a ward from which people did not leave. If a person could smile on my shift, I considered it a joy. I didn't even need my salary of 200-250 euros anymore," Hienadź notes.

He admits that of all the people he helped, the homeless were closest to him. During his summer wanderings in Spain, he himself temporarily became homeless and lost his documents. But to become a Buddha, he adds, one must lose home, family, friends, career, and faith in oneself.

"I've been in the shoes of everyone I helped. I helped the homeless — I was homeless. I helped the disabled — I was in hospitals with debilitating diagnoses. I helped drug addicts and was an addict. You wouldn't wish this on an enemy, because surviving clinical death is hard. I survived it. It was in Spain, when I died for the first time, to then survive," Hienadź summarizes his experience.

The interlocutor notes that he would like to work as a social worker abroad as well. But his lack of foreign language knowledge became an obstacle.

"I think it's a good job. It helps you not to become hardened, to be a normal person and to help others," the interlocutor reflects.

But overall, Hienadź does not complain about life in emigration. He says he does not compare life in his homeland and abroad.

"I am a Buddhist. I don't think about that. I think about not staining my path, about walking cleanly on this earth. No one knows where we will end up. I rejoice in what I have, and I am not surprised if I don't have something. I have a normal, ordinary path of a simple Buddhist," Smaliak explains.

Book of fairy tales

Hienadź says that next year he plans to publish a book "Fairy Tales Without Faces" about the Zapatistas — "Mexican revolutionary heroes who 'got it right,' do not support capitalism, do not let the 'French commune' and other free settlements live peacefully, because capitalists constantly demand something, and we want to live in a beautiful horizontal [society]." This book will be about respect for nature and people. It will be written through the prism of legends and fairy tales of Mayan and Inca culture. Hienadź has announced a competition for the best illustration for the book.

Павялічыць

Smaliak was inspired by the Mexican Zapatista ideologue Subcomandante Marcos and his collection of essays, declarations, and speeches "The Fourth World War." Smaliak calls Marcos's works fairy tales.

"For the first time, I read some great fairy tales there. They are filled for me with some kind of magic, a brightly refracted light. It's a wonderful, sad light that, unfortunately, I love. I was a curious young man and thought: I must definitely make a complete collection of fairy tales. Because there are serious anarchic works, but there are no fairy tales at all. As if there is no magic, no lightness in our lives, as if we don't believe that the world can be beautiful," Hienadź reflects.

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