{"id":499825,"date":"2026-05-24T01:17:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T01:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/499825\/"},"modified":"2026-05-24T01:17:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T01:17:15","slug":"this-is-also-a-love-story-by-sally-hayden-fearless-reporting-from-irelands-most-vital-journalist-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/499825\/","title":{"rendered":"This Is Also a Love Story by Sally Hayden: Fearless reporting from Ireland\u2019s most vital journalist \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

This Is Also a Love Story: Searching for Good in a Divided World<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Author:<\/strong> Sally Hayden<\/p>\n

ISBN-13:<\/strong> 9780008623265<\/p>\n

Publisher:<\/strong> Fourth Estate<\/p>\n

Guideline Price:<\/strong> \u00a320<\/p>\n

\u201cI once believed that journalists could change the world,\u201d writes Sally Hayden<\/a>, but \u201cat some point, that certainty left me\u201d. Hayden was Irish<\/a> Journalist of the Year last year, and won the Orwell Prize<\/a> in 2022 for her bestselling first book on the refugee crisis<\/a> in the Mediterranean. But \u201cthese days\u201d, she confesses, \u201cI often struggle to find motivation\u201d. The violence, tragedy and greed she has seen mean that she no longer feels that \u201canything would change if the broader public were better informed\u201d. Our era\u2019s \u201cvery specific form of detachment\u201d has brought \u201ca heartbreaking lack of care for the vulnerable\u201d.<\/p>\n

News reporting, Hayden worries, can itself become \u201cdehumanising\u201d, \u201ccompounding pain even as we expose it\u201d, flattening real people into reductive stories of victims and \u201cresilience\u201d. And so her powerful and personal second book became for her an act of \u201catonement\u201d, after the realisation that \u201cfrequently, while listening to an account of something horrific, there will be a moment when I think to myself, \u2018this is also a love story\u2019.\u201d Every story of mass murder or migration is also one of romance, family, friendship and community. The dehumanisation that facilitates indifference begins by ignoring that simple empathetic truth.<\/p>\n

So Hayden began to \u201csearch for love and connection even amid disaster\u201d. Her book\u2019s epigraph comes from Lord Goring in Oscar Wilde\u2019s An Ideal Husband, where the cynic assures us that he is not a pessimist because \u201cit is love \u2026 that is the true explanation of this world, whatever may be the explanation of the next\u201d. Hayden writes that \u201cI encounter love daily \u2013 more than fury, revenge, greed or abuses of power\u201d. From west to east Africa, in Ukraine and across the Middle East, she finds people going to extraordinary lengths to protect or honour those they love. The stories she collects reveal the human hearts and heartbreaks behind the cold statistics from which we turn away.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels like the world is burning,\u201d Hayden writes, but a Ukrainian woman called Irina tells her about the solace of loving someone \u201cwith whom you can endure all this Armageddon\u201d. Irina fell in love with Sergei, a moustachioed marine who retrained as a make-up artist, while watching the delight with which he ate the ham she prepared for him on their first date. The full Russian invasion in 2022 sent Sergei back to a war whose horrors he believes mean Ukrainians \u201cwill never really be the same\u201d. Irina keeps a folder of smiling lipsticked selfies to send when she is too sad to smile for real. <\/p>\n

Other Ukrainian women such as Olha feel they cannot cry, that it is better \u201cto be strong\u201d, even to volunteer themselves (\u201cI don\u2019t think it could get worse,\u201d Olha tells her husband Andrii when he objects). Queer soldiers demand equality from a country where they are expected to fight and die but where it is \u201cstill difficult to hold hands in the street\u201d. And in every couple, the fear that there is \u201cno space for negativity or disagreement\u201d when you are fighting for survival.<\/p>\n

But love persists. In Mosul under Isis\u2019s brutal occupation, there were still couples such as Saif and Marwan risking everything to hold secret weddings, speakers turned down low to avoid detection (it was at least \u201cvery cheap\u201d, Saif says, since venues and DJs were struggling for business under threats of beheading). Reporting on the city\u2019s liberation, from the Sumerian ruins destroyed by Isis, Hayden asks if gunfire is from renewed fighting, only to be reassured it\u2019s \u201cprobably part of a wedding\u201d.<\/p>\n

In Ghana as the country enacted a legal crackdown on homosexuality, Hayden collects WhatsApp voice notes from queer Ghanaians about resistance and love, both romantic and platonic. Their advice is full of care, even for strangers, and hope: \u201clove is freedom\u201d. Artist Va-Bene Elihem Fiatsi insists she will stay in Ghana even if she is chased with machetes, committed to \u201ca radical act of empathy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Love stories do not all have happy endings, and across Africa Hayden encounters unimaginable pain. Long after the social-media frenzy of #BringBackOurGirls, thousands of Nigerian families are still traumatised by the murders and enslavement of Boko Haram. \u201cI get nostalgic\u201d, one woman tells Hayden, \u201cwhen I see people with their parents or husbands. I think too much and I cannot sleep at night.\u201d <\/p>\n

The efforts parents made to keep their children safe almost defy belief. Hayden speaks to two women who chose to feign insanity, living naked and covering themselves in urine and dirt to make the guerrillas think they and their daughters were best left alone.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018The language of the people\u2019: Displaced perform in Beirut theatre amid warOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

In Uganda she meets David Ocitti, forced as a child to tell the Lord\u2019s Resistance Army which parent he loved more, leading to his father being murdered. He now works trying to reunite other men who were enslaved as child soldiers with families still wary of the war crimes their children committed. When asked what he would do if he met the men who killed his father, David replies \u201cI would forgive them\u201d; only through radical forgiveness can we \u201cstart a new page\u201d. <\/p>\n

Across the border in Rwanda, the destination of her first foreign assignment, Hayden finds the children of genocide struggling with similar questions. A man called Paul-Henri tells her about the \u201cartificial families\u201d of orphans where child survivors could find love and support. Hearing the unthinkable details of how adults and children were murdered \u2013 \u201chacked by machete\u201d; \u201csmashed against a wall\u201d \u2013 leaves Hayden shaken: \u201cI didn\u2019t know I had a soul until it started hurting\u201d. Yet even amid such hate, there was still love: a Hutu woman called Zula saved dozens of Tutsis because \u201cwe are siblings to each other\u201d. <\/p>\n

In 2024, because of her reporting on the mistreatment of refugees, the Rwandan government banned Hayden from the country. Even love stories are political. In Lebanon, Hayden meets Bassam al-Sheikh Hussein, a man who became famous for trying to rob a Beirut bank of his own money in 2022 during Lebanon\u2019s liquidity crisis. Bassam doused the bank in petrol and threatened to burn everything down if not given his savings to pay for his father\u2019s medical bills, prompting a wave of support (and copycats) in a heartbroken country.<\/p>\n

Across the border in Syria, the fall of Bashar al-Assad\u2019s brutal regime \u2013 after a civil war of carpet bombing and chemical weapons, and decades of institutionalised fear \u2013 came very slowly and then all at once. Reporting on that revolution was like something Hayden \u201chad never experienced before and will likely never experience again\u201d. Distraught families frantically searched the infamous Sednaya Prison for disappeared relatives, the people depicted in photos of horrific abuse broadcast by Christiane Amanpour when Hayden was her intern at CNN. <\/p>\n

Mariam al-Hallak\u2019s son was in those photos, and she spent years demanding to know where his body was, \u201cto go there to tell him stuff, and maybe he will tell me stuff\u201d. (Ta\u2019burni, people say lovingly in Levantine Arabic: \u201cMay you bury me.\u201d) Wafa Mustafa has campaigned for years to find out what happened to her father Ali, a human-rights activist. \u201cI literally don\u2019t have a life \u2026 sometimes I wish I would be hit by a car and lose my memory because this is the only way that I\u2019ll be able to stop.\u201d <\/p>\n

In Lebanon Hayden has had to learn what millions around the world live with, \u201cto ignore the rumble of warplanes, and to scrub my memories after seeing fragments of human flesh\u201d. The effect of witnessing war has clearly scarred her; it moves, she writes, from emotion to cynicism to \u201ca sense of futility\u201d. She worries that asking people \u201chow are you? How do you feel?\u201d is insensitive and patronising when the answers seem obvious. But Mariam has no problem answering: \u201cYou didn\u2019t cause me any extra pain\u201d, she reassures Hayden, \u201cbecause the story never leaves my mind.\u201d <\/p>\n

[\u00a0How Good It Is I Have No Fear of Dying: Lieutenant Yulia Mykytenko\u2019s Fight for Ukraine by Lara Marlowe – nuanced, frank, remarkableOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

In Japan Hayden meets Yuji Akagawa, a grandfather who set up a postbox for letters from those bereaved by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, after realising that people craved someone to hear their stories. \u201cWhy are you talking to me today?\u201d he remembers wondering. \u201cWe just met.\u201d He continues to man \u201cThe Drifting Post\u201d between the living and the dead, even though he has been \u201ctortured by listening\u201d. <\/p>\n

It can be painful to read Hayden\u2019s fearless reporting, even in such a beautiful meditation on love. She refuses to look away from the unfairness and overwhelming pain of a world marked by \u201cgrief on grief, sorrow on sorrow\u201d. And yet she is our most vital journalist, refusing to stop humanising those whose humanity is denied by those who perpetuate cruelty and unfairness. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe fundamental weakness of Western civilisation,\u201d said Elon Musk last year, \u201cis empathy.\u201d At such a time, Hayden argues passionately that \u201clove feels like a form of resistance \u2026something to fight for\u201d. It is the look in other mourning mothers\u2019 eyes that mean Mariam will not stop fighting for lost loved ones: \u201cI feel it is my duty to carry their voices.\u201d Sally Hayden continues to do just that for the voiceless, and it is our duty to listen.<\/p>\n

Christopher Kissane is a historian and writer, and the host of Ireland\u2019s Edge.<\/p>\n

Further ReadingMy Fourth Time We Drowned (Fourth Estate, 2022) by Sally Hayden<\/p>\n

Hayden\u2019s first book won the Orwell Prize for its extraordinary reporting on the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n

Life in Spite of Everything (Daunt Books, 2025) by Victoria Donovan<\/p>\n

Donovan explores the everyday life that persists in war-torn Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Love in a Time of War: My Years with Robert Fisk (Apollo, 2021) by Lara Marlowe<\/p>\n

Marlowe movingly chronicles the war reporting and marriage she shared with the late Robert Fisk. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This Is Also a Love Story: Searching for Good in a Divided World Author: Sally Hayden ISBN-13: 9780008623265…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499826,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[4204,1879,9,10,39088,1647,13,14,2215,6,11,12,14407,15,16,5,3713,34498,15516,7,8,2264,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-499825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-africa","tag-book-reviews","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-cnn","tag-elon-musk","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-for-you","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-lebanon","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-nigeria","tag-rwanda","tag-syria","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-ukraine-crisis","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116626918348802863","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}