In August 2018, Sally Hayden received a Facebook message. 'Hi Sister Sally, we need your help,' it read. 'We are under bad condition in Libya prison. If you have time, I will tell you all the story.' More messages followed from more refugees. They told stories of enslavement and trafficking, torture and murder, tuberculosis and sexual abuse. And they revealed something else: that they were all incarcerated as a direct result of European policy.
From there began a staggering investigation into the migrant crisis across North Africa. This book follows the shocking experiences of refugees seeking sanctuary, but it also surveys the bigger picture: the negligence of NGOs and corruption within the United Nations. The economics of the twenty-first-century slave trade and the EU's bankrolling of Libyan militias. The trials of people smugglers, the frustrations of aid workers, the loopholes refugees seek out and the role of social media in crowdfunding ransoms. Who was accountable for the abuse? Where were the people finding solutions? Why wasn't it being widely reported?
At its heart, this is a book about people who have made unimaginable choices, risking everything to survive in a system that wants them to be silent and disappear.
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On Sunday, 26 August 2018, I was scrolling through Netflix, in a sublet room in north London, when I received a Facebook message. PROLOGUE , THE SIM CARD IS OUR LIFE
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(@HarperCollinsUK, 31 March 2022, ebook, 486 pages, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @BorrowBox)
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I borrowed My Fourth Time, We Drowned without even a cursory glance at the blurb so I had no idea what the book was about. Like a lot of people in the West I have very vague ideas and notions about refugees. This books is an eye-opener and not necessarily in a good way. I was shocked at some of the events recounted by Sally and the people she tries to help. I was also sickened at the way the West have left these people to a terrible fate. How can such things be happening now? I remember feeling similar shock when I read the Dalai Lama's book, Freedom In Exile and learned Tibet is still under control by China and he is still in exile in India. This is a stark and utterly necessary book.
