After one of its own sons bombed the Ariana Grande pop concert in 2017, killing 22 people and injuring 116 more, the city of Manchester put on a brave face. If only it were that simple. For all the tolerance that Manchester showed after the attack, the spotlight turned quickly to its Libyan community, where the 22-year-old bomber came from. Hamish Macdonald finds a community struggling for solutions, but at one in its willingness to engage in those “difficult and embarrassing conversations”.