There was a wall at the end of our street. It wasn’t a very impressive wall. It was only about as tall as my shoulders, and some of the bricks were loose. Moss grew between them, and there was a crack near the bottom where ants disappeared into another country. At least, that was what we called it. On our side lived the people of Bell Street. On the other side lived the people of River Street.

Nobody knew exactly why we didn’t like each other. My grandfather said it started because someone from River Street stole a bicycle. My friend’s mother said it started because Bell Street children broke the windows of their community hall. Mr Patel, who was eighty-three and knew almost everything, said both stories were nonsense. “It started before the bicycle,” he told me. “What started it then?” He thought for a while. “I can’t remember.” That seemed strange to me. How could you dislike someone for so long that you forgot why?

Every year, our streets had a football match. Bell Street against River Street. It was supposed to be friendly. It never was.

That year, my brother Sam was playing. By half-time, Bell Street was winning 2–1. Everyone was shouting. Then a River Street player knocked Sam over. My dad jumped up. “CHEAT!” Someone from River Street shouted something back. Then everybody was standing. The referee blew his whistle, but nobody listened. For a few seconds, I watched two streets full of adults screaming at each other about a football. And I had a strange thought. Maybe wars don’t always begin with bombs. Maybe sometimes they begin with people deciding that there is an us and a them .

The match was cancelled. The next morning, somebody had painted THIEVES on the wall. By lunchtime, someone from River Street had painted LIARS underneath it. I stared at the two words. Then I went home and got my paint. Underneath them, I wrote: WHY? Someone crossed it out. So I wrote it again. WHY?

The next morning, there was an answer. BECAUSE YOU HATE US. I wrote: I DON’T. That afternoon: YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW US. I thought about that. They were right. So I wrote: THEN LET’S MEET. For two days, nobody answered. On Friday morning, one word appeared. WHEN?

We met at the wall on Saturday. There were six of us from Bell Street and five from River Street. Nobody spoke. Finally, a girl with enormous red glasses said, “This is awkward.” Everybody laughed. And somehow that helped. Her name was Amira. We started talking. Not about peace. Not about the wall. Not about whose parents had shouted the loudest at the football match. We talked about important things. Like whether pineapple belongs on pizza. Whether ghosts are real. Which teacher gives the most homework. And whether it would be better to fight one horse-sized duck or one hundred duck-sized horses. It turned out River Street children were surprisingly normal. Except Amira believed pineapple belonged on pizza, which was obviously a serious problem.

Then we talked about the wall. “My grandfather says your street stole our football trophy,” said Leo. “My grandmother says your street stole it,” Amira replied. “Maybe both streets are full of thieves,” I said. Nobody laughed this time. Then a small boy called Yusuf said something. “What if nobody stole it?” We all looked at him. “What?” “What if it just got lost?” That possibility had apparently never occurred to anyone. So we decided to investigate.

For the next week, children from both streets became detectives. We interviewed grandparents. We searched garages. We read old newspapers in the library. Every story was different. The bicycle had become three bicycles. The broken windows had happened before the bicycle, or after it, or possibly in a completely different town. The missing football trophy was definitely stolen, except according to one newspaper from 1987. The article said: LOCAL TROPHY DAMAGED IN COMMUNITY HALL FLOOD There was even a photograph. No thieves. No conspiracy. Just a burst water pipe. For almost forty years, people had been angry about a trophy that nobody had stolen. I thought that was funny. Then I thought it wasn’t funny at all.

We showed everyone the newspaper. Some people laughed. Some people looked embarrassed. A few people still argued. “You don’t understand everything that happened,” my grandfather said. He was probably right. One newspaper article couldn’t repair forty years of arguments. So we didn’t try to repair forty years. We started with Saturday.

We brought two tables to the wall. River Street brought food. Bell Street brought food. Then everybody complained because there was too much food. The adults stood mostly with people they already knew. So we children mixed up the chairs. My grandfather ended up sitting beside Amira’s grandmother. At first, they said nothing. Then they discovered they had both worked at the same factory when they were young. Twenty minutes later, they were arguing about which manager had been the worst. This time, they were on the same side.

The wall stayed. We talked about knocking it down, but Yusuf said we shouldn’t. “Why not?” I asked. “Because then people will forget.” So instead, we painted it. One person painted a tree. Someone else painted the river. Little children added handprints. Amira painted a huge blue bird carrying an olive branch, although it looked more like a chicken carrying broccoli. I painted two houses. Between them, I painted a bridge. At the bottom, where the ants still travelled between Bell Street and River Street without caring which side they belonged to, I wrote: PEACE DOESN’T START WHEN EVERYONE AGREES. Underneath it, Amira added: IT STARTS WHEN WE DECIDE TO LISTEN ANYWAY.

I think people imagine that building peace is something presidents do in enormous rooms with flags behind them. Maybe it is. But I think it happens in smaller places too. In classrooms. At dinner tables. On football fields. Between two people who are angry but decide to ask a question instead of shouting another insult. Maybe peace isn’t something you can finish building. Maybe it is more like a bridge. Every generation has to repair it. And sometimes, somebody has to be brave enough to cross it first.