My mother’s eyes look sad. She has very deep eyes. And they’re hazel-brown. “I’ll tell you when you’re older.” And then she goes off to do her chores in the next room.

Always my parents tell me that. Maybes they do not want me to worry myself.

But I cannot help it: I’ve been wondering it since a few days after my parents told me that we were Catholics. Christians. I was in shock for a few days, wondering why we would be part of the religious minority.

“I’m going to the Library,” I call over. I know that I probably couldn’t get entrance, as I’m not a scholar. But its a nice place to just sit and think in the sun.

Mother agrees, and I leave.

I walk down the side of the street, with a few odd pedestrians. Even from here, I can see the roof of the Library. A century ago, it was a mosque, one of the grandest this side of Bagdad.

Seventy-nine years ago, the Emirate - in a move guaranteeing religious alliance - granted the City to the Jewish people. Psychological warfare: giving the nationless Jews a foundation in one of the most important cities to Christendom.

By now I’ve passed several blocks of houses and shops. A voice calls over to me: “Good health to you, Isaac my friend.”

Jacob. I’d recognize that voice anywhere. “Morning and good health to you as well, my friend,” I reply.

I can’t tell him, I know. Jacob’s my best friend, and I dare not tell him. Particularly since Jacob’s father is in charge of the City’s security. And everyone knows how bad Roman Christians are when it comes to riots.

“Hey,” Jacob repeats, though I’d not heard him the first time, “are you all right?”

“Yes,” I answer. “I’m just fine.”

“Going down to the Library?” he guesses. A library of great Roman art and architecture. A bulkwart of the past, surviving in the present only because it changed, however reluctantly.

“May God grant those vandals a slow death,” Jacob muttered, A mutter from Jacob, and I look at what caught his eye. It is an upside-down cross painted on a wall. The unwritten message is clear: ‘return the church!’

Times such as this, I can understand why my parents practice their faith in secret. Radicals such as whoever did - or commissioned - this painting, they give my faith a negative image in these lands.

But no compromise will ever be reached, I am certain, sad as it is.

It is now a Library, a repository.

Before that, it was a Mosque.

And two centuries before that, it was Saint Peter’s Basilica.

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