The false admission
Suleiman's good friend's father is shown on television admitting to crimes that Suleiman knows are not true. He sees the admissions of guilt as suggestive, and so the reader can take them as a symbol too. They represent the mistreatment, abuse, and perhaps torture that the Qaddafi dictatorship might employ against someone, and to Suleiman, it represents injustice, because the government is clearly fabricating propaganda for manipulation of the masses.
Paranoia motif
Through motifs, we see what it might be like to be Suleiman. He is paranoid. He sees people that are confusing to him, like his father, and he realizes that there is more to Najwa's story than he originally understood. For a child, watching someone he knows be hung in public (the professor) is almost unbearably frightening and contributes to his paranoia. The suspicion that the government is watching their community and their family is paranoia, but it is not misplaced. They are correct in their paranoid feelings.
The father
Suleiman's own father is abducted and tortured by the government, and this is the ultimate symbol to Suleiman that the government is corrupt and evil. The father represents Suleiman and his family, literally, so that Suleiman is unable to process these things emotionally. He has to leave the country, knowing that the Qaddafi dictatorship is completely corrupt and authoritarian. This symbolizes the personal stakes, because it directly affects his own safety. The family are considered enemies of the state.
The exile
There is a symbolic moment when the boy realizes that he will probably never go home to Libya. He is permanently exiled. This symbolizes a change in his sense of self, because he has only existed in his own society, but now, he is a political refugee and a nomad, because he has no sense of home. This can be seen as a symbol on multiple layers, from broad, existential dread all the way to the specifics of Qaddafi's personal evil.
Family as a symbol
Suleiman's family is a symbol that changes. For one, it changes with the introduction to his father. He undergoes an archetypal experience when he meets with the ghost of his father, but it isn't a ghost, it is his real dad who has abandoned him in the hopes of protecting him. The boy sees this and then understands the stakes of injustice when the father dies, leaving him alone with the survivors to live as refugees and mourn him in extreme duress. The family is his ultimate obligation now, because he is invited to become someone who can help them as they support each other through horrible circumstances. They represent love.
