Sally Hayden: ‘You have to be careful not to let your empathy or your humour be torn away’

Your book, My Fourth Time, We Drowned, has now won Irish Book of the Year, the Orwell Prize for Political Writing and the Michel Déon Prize. For those who haven’t read it, can you describe its subject, explain how it came about and where the title comes from?

The book looks at efforts the rich world, and especially the EU, is making to keep refugees from seeking safety on our territory. It documents years of my communications with people locked up in migrant detention centres in North Africa. The title comes from a quotation by a Somali refugee, who made it to Europe after five attempts but lost family members along the way.

What can we as Irish and EU citizens do to address the plight of refugees seeking to reach Europe via the Mediterranean Sea?: The first step is simply for everyone to inform themselves about it – particularly on the role that EU policy is playing.

What are the other most memorable stories you have covered and places you have visited as a foreign correspondent?: Dictatorship in Syria; UN corruption in Sudan; the effects of the insurgency in northeast Nigeria; Ebola in DR Congo; a plague outbreak in Madagascar.

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Does it make you see Ireland in a different light?: Yes and no. So many aspects of humanity are the same wherever you go, but of course there is a lot more privilege in Ireland.

I imagine your work has brought you into close contact with the extremes of human behaviour: great heroism and terrible cruelty. Has it affected your outlook on life?: You have to be careful not to let your empathy or your humour be torn away. Certainly I would say I am different to how I was a decade ago, but is some of that simply from growing up? I’m not sure.

How do you unwind after a difficult assignment?: I sleep and exercise – going to a gym or doing boxing classes.

What is your current project?: I have a few reporting assignments coming up for The Irish Times and two book ideas that I’m slowly developing.

Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?: When I was about 16 my mom took me to Top Withins, which is said to be the inspiration for the Wuthering Heights farmhouse. By then, I had read many books by the Brontë sisters.

What advice would you give to your younger writing self?: It takes time to find your way.

Who do you admire the most?: The older I get the more respect I have for my parents for a myriad of reasons.

You are supreme ruler for a day. Which law do you pass or abolish?: That’s a dangerous question for a journalist. We’re advised to stay out of direct politics and I’m happy to keep it that way.

What current book, film, TV show and podcast would you recommend?: I recently read So Distant From My Life by Burkinabè writer Monique Ilboudo: a novel about the relationship between Africa and Europe that could be read as a companion piece to Tayeb Salih’s 1960s classic Season of Migration to the North.

Which public event affected you most?: When the Iraq War began I remember being glued to 24-hour TV news.

[ My Fourth Time, We Drowned: A book of evidence ]

[ My fourth time, we drowned: A European disaster ]

The most remarkable place you have visited?: There are so many beautiful and remarkable places across Africa, but possibly the memories that will stay with me the longest are from Tigray, northern Ethiopia, before the current war began. We hiked mountains and visited churches carved into cliffs. I’m so grateful to have travelled there and devastated to see what has happened since.

Your most treasured possession?: My laptop and camera, and various gifts from people I’ve met across the world.

What is the most beautiful book that you own?: A first edition of David Copperfield, which was a gift from my grandmother.

Which writers, living or dead, would you invite to your dream dinner party?: If I wasn’t concerned that I’d be disappointing company, and certain that they have better things to be doing, I’d like to hold a big dinner to thank all the incredible writers who endorsed the book: Jon Lee Anderson; Christina Lamb; Edna O’Brien; Sally Rooney; Lindsey Hilsum; Oliver Bullough; Fintan O’Toole; Mark Bowden; Michela Wrong; John Sweeney; and Miriam O’Callaghan, the very first blurber, would be invited too. It was a level of support I could never have dreamed of, from people whose work I have always admired.

The best and worst things about where you live?: I am a bit nomadic, after spending five years in London, two in Uganda and one in Sierra Leone. Living out of a suitcase is great in many ways but some day I wonder if it might be comforting to own a piece of furniture. It’s been brilliant to spend more time in Dublin since the book came out, catching up with friends and family.

What is your favourite quotation?: Today it is Rumi’s “Do not feel lonely, the entire universe is inside you”.

Who is your favourite fictional character?: I used to always love detectives, like Hercule Poirot and Lord Peter Wimsey.

A book to make me laugh?: They aren’t exactly comedy, but when I’ve travelled to various cities lately, like Accra, Lagos and Nairobi, I’ve read the associated book from the Akashic Noir series. They are collections of crime stories by writers set in their own country and some do contain wry humour.

A book that might move me to tears?: Bushra al-Maqtari’s What Have You Left Behind, about the devastation of the war in Yemen, which I recently reviewed for The Irish Times; and Alexa Hagerty’s Still Life With Bones, on the exhumation of mass graves in Latin America. It comes out next year but I was sent an early copy.

Sally Hayden reports from Africa for The Irish Times. You can read her work here