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Chapter 1: Why did Sally Hayden write 'This is Also a Love Story'?
Thank you very much. or watching the child soldiers of Boko Haram attempting to find forgiveness or redemption, she has been perhaps surprised to find the power of love triumphing again and again over awful vicissitudes. And she's written about some of those uplifting encounters in a new book, which is called This is Also a Love Story, subtitled Searching for Good in a Divided World.
Sally Hayden, good morning and welcome.
Hi, thank you so much for having me.
I have to ask you why you wrote the book, because you mentioned that journalists can become a bit inured to violence, inured to death, a bit dehumanized in their own way, such as their exposure to these awful things.
Yeah, so I first had the idea for this book eight years ago now, and it was something that, you know, even after just a few years of being an international reporter, I was struggling myself. I had become kind of... Yeah, I was just seeing so much violence and cruelty, and at the same stage when I reported on crises, I'd also always see love.
Like, I see love every day doing this work, and I wanted to kind of... just make sure that that was also being documented. And so the book is a collection of nine different crises, nine different, you know, I call them a kind of love story. It's not just romantic love. It's love for family, love for community. And yeah, just a reminder that even in crisis situations, that love is always present.
And we have to remember that there's a so-called ceasefire going on at the moment between Israel and Lebanon.
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Chapter 2: What are the themes of love and resilience in crisis situations?
And yet the shooting continues overnight.
Yeah, so I actually left Lebanon on Thursday. And yeah, from what we've seen, fighting is continuing. And yeah, I mean, there's been many ceasefires that I've spoken to you on this show about before. What's happening there is just devastating. It's, you know, impossible to kind of describe the extent of the devastation, you know, both killing but also displacement.
And yeah, just people, you know, their lives being destroyed.
Now, later on in the book, there is a chapter dedicated to Lebanon, but it is one of the most extraordinary stories. It's not overtly about love, love, love, but it is about the love of a man for his family who are struggling, even though they have money in the bank. Tell me what happened.
Yeah, this is the story of Bassam, who's a Lebanese man. As people I'm sure know, there was before the current war, there was financial crisis and Lebanon has been through, you know, a massive series of crises.
There was a big explosion as well, which was flour, I think, exploding in a warehouse.
The port explosion. And yeah, what happened was that people's savings, everything that they had in the bank was seized or, you know, they just couldn't access it.
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Chapter 3: How does the current situation in Lebanon impact personal stories?
Yeah, I mean, it was there ostensibly, although maybe it wasn't. That's another story. Maybe the money really wasn't there, but nominally they had deposits in the bank.
Yeah. And so Bassam, his father needed medical care. His father had Alzheimer's and was very fragile and needed, you know, he fell and broke bones and he needed medical care. And Bassam needed money. And so he decided that he was going to raid the bank.
And he went, he took a gun and a gallon of gasoline and went into a bank in Beirut and basically carried out a hostage situation where he said, I'm not going. I'm not letting these bank employees go until I get my money. And the strange thing that happened was that the bank became surrounded by supporters who were like, you know, wanted they were like, this is what we all want to do.
You know, they were cheering him on. And when he got out or when he left. He was facing legal ramifications, but he became hailed as a national hero. And there was this big question of like, who's the real bank raider? Is it Bassam or is it the bankers and the politicians?
And there was a flurry of trying to get him his money. And it turned out that they went to all different bank branches and so on. They couldn't find any money for him. They only got bits and pieces. They couldn't raise all the money that he owned.
Yeah. And, you know, after this, there was a previous raid that had happened and then there were more raids after this. And what I document in the book is that many of those raids were being carried out by people who had family members who needed medical care. And so for me, yeah. not to quote the title too, obviously, but this is also a love story.
It's about what people do for the people they love in a time of crisis. And Bassam, he actually, his family come from a border village. And so his story has kind of continued in terms of being affected and his family being affected by, again, the multiple crises in Lebanon.
The opening chapter is about Ukraine.
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Chapter 4: What challenges do couples face during the Ukraine war?
And you remark when you were in Ukraine and you hear the air raid sirens and you make a calculation. Will I bother going to a shelter? When I get there, it may be closed. This may not be coming towards my part of the city. So, you know, get in the bath or whatever you do.
But the story is about Ali and Andri and their husband and wife and how they managed to stay together, even though they don't see each other very much. He's at the front.
Yeah, so there's two couples that I mostly profiled. So it was Olga and Andrei, and then also Irina and Sergei. And what I wanted to look at was how the Ukraine war has affected personal relationships, particularly because men of a certain age were barred from leaving Ukraine.
And I spent time, particularly with women, but I actually managed to meet both of those men as well when they did get leave unexpectedly. And yeah, just to talk to them about... What this has meant for their relationship since the full scale invasion, you know, they barely see each other, but they've managed to stay together.
And if there's a moment where one of them might be going through a particular point, moving from A to B, and there's an opportunity to see him maybe for 20 minutes.
Yeah.
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Chapter 5: How do personal relationships survive in wartime conditions?
You might travel for hours just to see him for 20 minutes.
exactly and you know the really touching thing about going to ukraine was like um these people they really wanted to speak about this because they felt like war it is also personal and the impacts on your personal life they are really significant and maybe overlooked or not really understood and um yeah speaking to them at length about this it was really kind of uh meaningful i
And when the guys come back then for some R&R back to Kiev or Lvov or wherever they are, they don't adjust readily to the normality that still can be enjoyed in those cities.
Exactly. And that was what the men, when I met the men, finally, that was what they wanted to speak about, the mental health ramifications and how, you know, you can come back, but you can't adjust. You can be like, you know, nervous to be in crowds or being very, very jumpy. You know, you're, yeah, the mental health impact is really.
There's a bang from a building site or whatever. And they're wondering why everyone is not running for cover because it is the sound of war.
Yeah, or even seeing crowds and just thinking, you know, all of these people could be killed at any moment. You know, what they were saying is, you know, you need to control your surroundings. Often you won't even leave your apartment for a few days.
Wedding dresses and makeup in Mosul. Extraordinary. I mean, it shows the, I suppose, the strength of the human spirit to carry on and the lust for normality, for everything to be the way it used to be.
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Chapter 6: What are the stories of love and commitment in Mosul?
Yeah, so this is northern Iraq. I went to Mosul, which was occupied by ISIS at one point.
And largely destroyed.
Yeah, large portions were destroyed. And I met a couple called Marwa and Saif, and they had a secret wedding while ISIS was in control. They fell in love through these secret phone calls they used to have.
when phones even could get you you know accused of being a spy and and potentially have very serious ramifications and they got married um with the music you know they you weren't allowed to have music so they turned it down really low and they described like yeah the whole experience for me and i think that it was a reminder again of um yeah i'm not going to say normal life but you know how people make commitments to each other and can even fall in love in the most difficult circumstances
And sometimes where most of life goes on normally, I'm thinking of Gaon and the chapter you have on LGBTQI plus love in that particular place where, I mean, any such behavior is regarded as completely abnormal, illegal, against the law of man and God.
Yeah, so I actually went to Ghana for the first Pride Month after a new very kind of, you know, homophobic bill was approved by Parliament. And I was covering how...
Yeah, how this community, they call it their community, how people support each other and how they managed to have a pride event in a secret location even after this terrible bill had, you know, been approved and unleashed this kind of wave of homophobia. Yeah.
Now, there are two stories about child armies, I suppose. Boko Haram, who famously abducted young women, schoolgirls, in their hundreds. And then the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, which I'd kind of forgotten about.
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Chapter 7: How does the LGBTQI+ community navigate challenges in Ghana?
Boko Haram, still writ large, I suppose, but the Lord's Resistance Army. And trying to rehabilitate the kids who lost their way in that process.
Yeah, so I accompanied three men. They were kidnapped as children, but returned, managed to escape the LRA as men around 16, 17 years later, depending on the person. And I accompanied them as they were reunited with their families for the first time after that period of time being away. And yeah, it was extraordinary.
It was extraordinary to see the families, you know, the efforts that were made to welcome them back and In northern Uganda, there's been kind of this move towards just trying to make sure that like war doesn't happen again. This move towards peace and even forgiveness and reconciliation, which has been very difficult.
Very difficult because many of these kids as children were forced to kill members of their own family.
Exactly. And yeah, it's very painful. But it was also very moving to see, you know, to see these families welcoming these men back.
And again, in Nigeria, Boko Haram and the aftermath of all of that. I mean, girls who perhaps became pregnant by members of Boko Haram and how they or their children would be greeted.
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Chapter 8: What is the significance of family bonds in post-genocide Rwanda?
Yeah, exactly. And I was spending time particularly with mothers who, you know, went to great lengths to try and protect their children from being kidnapped and taken by Boko Haram.
Another extraordinary story is the situation in Rwanda post-genocide. And we all remember the Tutsi and the Hutu conflict and literally, literally rivers of blood and the construction of artificial families to help the survivors get through life.
Yeah, I mean, so I first actually became aware of these families in 2014, which was the 20th anniversary of the genocide. I went there. It was pretty much my first professional journalistic trip. And I met, they call them artificial families. So it's a group of young people who have...
lost you know often both parents sometimes one parent in the genocide and many other relatives as well and they have these families they appoint a father and a mother and they would meet every week or twice a week even and basically just offer each other support and so when i was writing the book 10 years on i decided i was going to track down some of the people i met and see what had happened to them and the families are intact
The families, I mean, they don't meet every week.
Scattered all over the world, maybe. But they're still, you know, the artificial brother would still be your brother to whom an invitation to your wedding would be sent.
Yeah, on WhatsApp, the families are kind of existing on WhatsApp now.
Yeah. There's a chapter about Syria and the story of Fawad Mahmood and her personal tragedy, a very brave woman whose son and husband disappeared.
Yeah. So the Syria chapter is about the quest for justice by women who are missing fathers, sons and husbands as well. And I interview particularly three women and spend time with them learning about the person who was missing and their quest for justice and for answers.
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