Friends had urged Matar since 2004 to contact Seif el-Islam Qaddafi, known for occasionally releasing political prisoners. In 2003, during a dark period in Paris, Matar wrote Seif a letter—one of nearly 300 he had sent to authorities without reply. In 2010, at the height of his campaign, he calls Seif. An aide, Rajab el-Laiyas, schedules a meeting at the Jumeirah hotel.

Fearing kidnapping, Matar summons Ziad from Cairo. They alert allies to the meeting details, and Diana waits at a nearby café. After an hour’s delay, they meet Seif and his entourage, including the older lawyer Mohammad al-Hawni and several bodyguards.

Seif breaks from the regime’s official denial and confirms Jaballa was taken to Libya. He promises to investigate and provide all facts, signaling a desire to end the search. Al-Hawni adds that ending their campaign could mean acknowledging Jaballa’s death. Seif repeatedly implies that outcome, asking what they want if their father is dead and deflecting questions about the alternative. Ziad sets three conditions for returning to Libya: learning their father’s fate, releasing their imprisoned uncles and cousins, and returning their stolen house. Seif immediately agrees to the house.

As they leave, al-Hawni urges them to prepare for the worst. An hour later, he says Seif would have told them if Jaballa were alive, implying Seif already knows the answer. A month later, Seif calls saying he wants to be friends and asks Matar to write down the case details as the next step. Matar complies that evening.

Around this time, Tarek al-Abady, a cultural attaché from the Libyan embassy and emissary of Seif and intelligence chief Abuzed Dorda, offers prizes and business opportunities. Matar reiterates he only wants his father’s fate. After Matar sends the information, Seif promises news, but his secretary, Mohammed Ismail, demands that Matar publicly state Egypt’s role in the abduction so Libya can save face before releasing information. Matar notes this is already public.

On March 5, a week before the 20th anniversary of Jaballa’s disappearance, Ismail flies to London. He repeats the demand: Give an interview to a specific Egyptian journalist and write to President Mubarak, in return for all information within two days. He also invites Matar to work with them. After consulting advisers, Matar learns the journalist is regime-controlled. He refuses and places responsibility back on Seif.

Unable to travel to Cairo because his first novel made it unsafe, Matar flies to Nairobi to meet his mother and Ziad for the 20th anniversary of Jaballa’s disappearance. His maternal uncle, Soleiman, lives in Kenya. They spend the morning by a hotel pool, avoiding the difficult subject with small talk. After their mother leaves, a branch crashes onto the table between the brothers, shattering Matar’s phone. Neither is hurt. They discuss eagles and vultures. Hisham recalls a photograph of his father with an eagle and wonders if the falling branch was a sign.

The day before the anniversary, Mohammed Ismail calls from Brazil, repeating Seif’s demand. On the anniversary evening, the family gathers at their mother’s flat with Uncle Soleiman. They commemorate the occasion by telling and retelling the story of Jaballa’s abduction until three o’clock in the morning, each person remembering new details.

Ten days after Nairobi, Mohammed Ismail repeats the demand; Matar refuses. On June 16, Matar’s cousin, Hamed, brings a message from Uncle Mahmoud in Abu Salim prison that conditions have worsened drastically, and prisoners will begin a hunger strike in one week unless things improve. Matar scrambles to reach Seif. Two days later, Seif texts that it is his birthday. Two days after that, he calls, promising imprisoned relatives will be moved to arrange their release and offering a tentative plan regarding Jaballa. They even exchange quotations meant to signal common ground.

Weeks pass with no progress. When Matar calls to complain, Seif screams; Matar hangs up, then takes a calmer follow-up call. He refuses to take further steps until Seif provides what he already knows. Seif asks Matar to get the British government to send a formal letter to Libya’s Foreign Ministry to enable action. The Foreign Office confirms the letter was sent in August 2010. Matar interprets British policy as performative and self-serving, recalling Margaret Thatcher defending her relationship with the South African apartheid regime, and speculates Seif wants to polish his reformist image in the West.

Matar hears nothing from Seif until January 27, 2011, after Tunisia’s revolution and the start of Egyptian protests. Seif says the file is ready and will be delivered by Sheik Sulabi. Six days later, he announces the imprisoned relatives have been released and voices support for the Egyptian uprising. On February 20, as Libya’s own uprising begins, he appears on television blaming the unrest on Libyans abroad and making threats, then joins his father’s brutal campaign.

Days later, a disillusioned Mohammad al-Hawni calls from Rome denouncing Seif. Matar confronts him; al-Hawni claims ignorance about Jaballa’s fate. Weeks after a blind man holding Jaballa’s photograph is found in Abu Salim, al-Hawni suggests the man might be Jaballa. Matar hangs up.

In March 2012, Matar meets the former prisoner who had claimed to have seen Jaballa in 2002. Shown a photograph of Jaballa from the 1980s, the man says it is not the person he saw. He clarifies he never recognized Jaballa himself—another prisoner had pointed someone out. The sighting that sparked Matar’s campaign was a mistaken identification. Exhausted, Matar returns to his earlier certainty that Jaballa died in the 1996 massacre.

He wanders to the Benghazi courthouse, now a shrine to the revolution’s martyrs. In one room, a memorial to the 1,270 victims of the Abu Salim massacre covers the walls with photographs and includes a scale model of the prison. He scans the faces for his father but does not find him. A woman at a desk, whose nephew died in the massacre, says the record is incomplete and hopes he finds out one day. Her words move him to tears.

Matar reflects on how knowledge of the massacre surfaced in 2001, when regime officials secretly altered Family Books to declare prisoners dead of natural causes in 1996. He recalls a mother who discovered the change later and ran into the street screaming “Years”—for the years she had brought gifts to the prison for her already-dead son. These families eventually began protesting outside Abu Salim, a movement that helped spark the 2011 revolution.

That evening, while Diana photographs a city square, two young boys nearly fight. Afterward, one approaches Matar. The boy’s brother was disappeared during the 2011 revolution. When Matar mentions his father also disappeared, the boy wishes for his safe return. Matar and Diana return the next day hoping to see the boys again, but they do not appear.

Matar travels to Ajdabiya and meets his uncle Hmad Khanfore for the first time. He recalls learning that when his cousin Ali was released from prison, it was contingent on signing a formal apology to Qaddafi—a detail that taints Matar’s pride in having helped secure their freedom.

Hmad recounts the events leading to the Abu Salim massacre. When Matar asks if his father died in the massacre, Hmad says only God knows. They had lost contact after Jaballa was moved to a different cell, communicating only through rare smuggled letters. Hmad says that, after 13 prisoners escaped in November 1995, conditions deteriorated. When a prisoner named Khaled al-Baksheesh died from neglect after guards tortured him with water hoses, tensions broke. On Friday, June 28, 1996, prisoners in cell number nine overpowered their guards, triggering a prison-wide standoff.

That evening, senior officials, including intelligence chief and Qaddafi brother-in-law Abdullah Senussi, arrived to negotiate. Senussi cordially promised to meet all demands and offered to take 120 of the most ill prisoners to hospital as a gesture of good faith. After debate, the prisoners selected men including Hmad, Mahmoud, Ali, and Saleh. At dawn, they were marched into a courtyard filled with soldiers.

An official asked for members of the Ajdabiya Group—Jaballa’s opposition cell. Hmad identified himself and Ali. At the last moment, their small group was locked in a separate cell while everyone else was herded into a workshop. Hmad heard an explosion as Senussi threw a grenade into the workshop, followed by gunfire. This was only the beginning; hundreds more prisoners were rounded up from their cells, taken to six roofless courtyards, and shot from above by soldiers and guards over a two-hour period.

The dead were left in the courtyards for four days until the smell forced many prisoners to vomit. Months later, the bodies were exhumed from the mass graves, the bones ground to dust, and the powder scattered in the sea.

At Uncle Mahmoud’s house, Hmad continues sharing memories of prison life. He says he wrote poetry in English but was forbidden from keeping the pages, so he no longer remembers the verses. He recalls smuggled letters from Jaballa that had to be destroyed immediately after being read. In one, Jaballa likened himself to a mountain, unaltered by passing storms. Matar feels the painful contrast with a recording where his father wept. He reflects on Telemachus from The Odyssey, realizing the son cannot move forward while the father’s fate remains unknown.

Uncle Mahmoud shows Matar a pillowcase he stole in prison. He unpicked the threads to create a single sheet of linen, then covered it with tiny poems and letters to his children, the text arranged in intricate patterns resembling a diagram of human anatomy. He hid it by sewing it into his underwear waistband. He calls it possibly the only surviving literature from Abu Salim.

Exhausted, Matar naps in the bed of his deceased cousin, Izzo. He dreams of Izzo apologizing to the young fighters who died in the revolution, saying his generation should have acted sooner. When Matar wakes, he joins Aunt Zaynab in the kitchen, where she makes traditional bread on an upside-down metal bowl over a flame. He fills glasses with yogurt milk and carries a tray with bread and date syrup to the patio to join Uncle Mahmoud and his children.