In the walled old city of Tripoli, Libya's independence flag pokes through crumbling buildings.
In these run-down streets stands the empty, faded peach-colored Dar Bishi synagogue.
The exterior is pock marked by age and gunshots holes.
The interior can only be seen by climbing up the rubble of a collapsed house.
Libyan Jewish exile David Gerbi says he has dreamed of restoring this synagogue for 10 years.
The 12-year-old Gerbi fled Tripoli with his family in 1967 during the Arab-Israeli war. The anger it provoked amongst Muslims in Muammar Gaddafi's Libya led to attacks on Jews in his neighborhood.
Gaddafi expelled the rest of Libya's 38,000 Jews two years later and confiscated their assets.
Gerbi says he is the first Jew to return to Libya since the revolt that ousted Muammar Gaddafi in August.
SOUNDBITE: Libyan Jewish exile David Gerbi, saying: (English):
"For me this place is representing the beginning of the hope. This is what it's representing because where there is God there if faith, where there is faith there is hope where there is hope there can be also peace."
Now that Gaddafi is gone, Gerbi wants to foster religious tolerance, and he wants the synagogue to be the symbol of reconciliation.
SOUNDBITE: Libyan Jewish exile David Gerbi, saying: (English):
"We can start from where we are now with the right people, that they hold for us this space and to be renovated and to have as a symbol of a concrete possible reconciliation between all the souls of the Libyans."
It is still unclear how Gerbi's ambitions will be received by Libyans. Most Tripoli synagogues have been destroyed or converted to mosques.
Deborah Lutterbeck, Reuters