I once took a ferry across the English Channel from Dover to the Belgian coastal city of Oostende, and spent part of the summer in that country. My first trip to the capital, Brussels, was through the countryside and into the city on the back of a motorcycle. I marveled at the signs announcing preparations for the celebration – the following year – of the 1,000th anniversary of the city’s founding; I was from Washington, DC, a city not even two-hundred years old at the time.

The city I stayed in (with cousins living there at the time) was Louvain-la-Neuve. Eighteen miles southeast of the capital, the place seemed more like a small medieval town or village than city. Its close-in buildings of just two to four stories sat along narrow, winding, cobblestoned, pedestrian-only streets. It has a unique history, and I now wonder if that history may be a hindrance to the unity Belgium needs.

From my description of the town you may think it might be nearly as old as Brussels, but it is not. The first people ever to live there had arrived a mere six years before my visit – yes, six. If the current political campaigns here in this country are reminders of how Americans have remained divided over time, the fact that the city of Louvain-la-Neuve even exists is a testament to how humans divide themselves.

Belgians are divided mainly by language, separating themselves into communities speaking Belgian Dutch (the Flemish) or a dialect of French (the Walloons). Both groups have vied for power, influence and respect throughout the history of Belgium, a country that emerged as an independent nation in 1830 out of the European miasma of war, revolution and fallen empires. From the heights of governmental edicts all the way down to street signs, the dilemma of dual languages must be dealt with. When not done well, the consequences are substantial.

Consider Louvain-la-Neuve, for example. It is the very definition of a college town, as it was created solely to house the university that was built there. The town’s name is French for “New Leuven”, Leuven being the primarily Dutch-speaking town where the school was founded in 1834 – and remains today. Confused? It’s understandable if you are. Unable to bridge their differences, the leaders of the Catholic University of Leuven split the school in two in 1968, creating the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, which remained in Leuven, and the Université Catholique de Louvain, around which the new, French-speaking town was begun. This was not just an academic exercise. The school’s split contributed to the fall of the Belgian government.

That summer in Louvain-la-Neuve, I remember learning some of this history from students and residents who recounted the then ten-year-old breakup with all the indignation of the jilted. Now, twenty-three years after Europe became unified and Brussels became the continent’s de facto capital, the old divisions among the people of Belgium highlight the burden that country has placed upon itself. If Belgian Catholics could not get along with Belgian Catholics, if speaking Dutch or French is enough to separate them, how do they hope to manage the intricacies of integrating Belgians of North African descent speaking Arabic and practicing Islam? It is not as if that community does not have a need to be woven into the fabric of Belgium and, by extension, Europe.

I am reminded of that need when thinking of another story I was told while there that summer. It was about an Arab student who – while walking along a street in Louvain-la-Neuve one day — saw a young Arab boy. Surmising there must be an Arab family somewhere in town, and desperately seeking some semblance of familiarity, the student followed the boy home, hoping to find where he and his family lived. As it turned out, the boy was not Arab after all. He was my six-year-old cousin, an American. The student became one of a few befriended by my family.

We should view the recent terrorist bombings in Brussels with caution, but not as a cautionary tale. Their problem is not the same as ours. Successfully accommodating citizens who are neither of European heritage nor Christian by faith is something this country still hasn’t mastered, but — when compared to Europe — we seem to have gotten some of it right. This will remain the case, unless upended by the xenophobia being stoked this political season.

for Eric Metzner and Jackie Davis