SINCE a huge flood swept away whole neighbourhoods of Libya's city of Derna last month, Abdulsalam al-Kadi, 43, has been searching for his father and brother.
He doesn't expect to find them alive but he wants to bury them so he has a grave to mourn over.
With friends, he has scoured mudbanks where his family's house once stood. He has asked every hospital.
He has pored over many of the photographs of the 4,000 bodies recovered.
"We thought maybe the sea took them. Maybe they were in the harbour.
"Those were really tough days. They still are really tough days," said Kadi, who spent two days travelling to Derna from his new home in the United States.
Three weeks after the flash flood killed thousands of people, many survivors have yet to find their loved ones, even as Libya's rival factions squabble over who to blame for the disaster and how to rebuild the ruined city.
Many families face the prospect that they may never find out what happened to parents, children or other relatives despite efforts to identify bodies, many buried hastily in mass graves, using photographs or DNA testing.
Kadi, who could barely recognise his hometown when he arrived, says his mother and sister hold out hope his father and brother survived.
But he says he has had to come to terms with the fact that they died.
"What was difficult in the first few days was hope. People would say they saw them somewhere. For us, it was as if they died again every day. It drove me crazy."
Derna, a coastal city in eastern Libya known as a cultural centre, was built on a seasonal river that ran from a mountain range into the sea.
The city had suffered in the chaos that followed Libya's 2011 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation-backed uprising.
Islamic State militants seized the city in 2015, killing one of Kadi's two brothers, before eastern forces under commander Khalifa Haftar captured it.
The devastation now is on a different scale.
Overnight, a narrow valley that ran between neat streets and buildings was turned into a wide expanse of mud, rocks and lumps of masonry.
But organising Derna's reconstruction will be complicated, with Libya split between an internationally recognised government in Tripoli in the west and eastern regions controlled by Haftar with parallel institutions.
Aid efforts are visible on the streets, with mechanical diggers clearing debris.
But residents last week complained that they had not received any help in repairing or rebuilding homes or businesses.
Mohamed al-Ghoeil, 49, was trying to clear mud that caked shelves of a grocery store owned by his brother.
"There is a total absence of the state to reassure people.
"We decided to lessen some of our pain by cleaning what we can to bring life back to affected areas."
The government in the east, which is not internationally recognised, said on Sunday it was postponing an international reconstruction conference it had planned.
The Tripoli government has also said it would hold a conference, without giving a date.
In a fractured nation, reconstruction and the coordination required could fuel another tussle for power, analysts say.
The cost of labourers has shot up too high for Khaled al-Fortas, who said he could not afford the wages demanded by workers to help clear his home.
For Kadi, the priority remains finding his lost family members.
"A whole city was underwater, with people in the buildings. It is impossible to pull them out with our capabilities."
The writer are from Reuters