Summary

Matar recalls the following day in Benghazi, meeting more people he "half remembered" (103). He focuses not on his interactions with these relations, however, and instead on his innate connection with the city of Benghazi that he realized while escaping the company of others in a downtown café with his wife. He pays specific attention to the architecture of the city, and how it tells a story of Banghazi's many influences- Ottoman, Greek, Byzantine, Phoenician, and most prominently, the Roman Catholic Benghazi Cathedral.

Matar provides a lengthy interjection dedicated to the architect of the Benghazi Cathedral where in 1977 two students were publicly hanged in response to a demonstration against government intrusion in universities. Guido Ferrazza was commissioned in 1927 to help draft a new plan for Italian Benghazi, where Matar contends a "unique architectural expression had occurred" (107). This expression intentionally left Benghazi's "cocktail of influences" intact...