Miss Colombia

Tzipora’s only party dress.

Tzipora was a foreigner. It was hard to pick out a distinct cultural background amidst her school uniform and wardrobe of modest, secular dailywear, which is typical of Vekllei. But she was a foreigner, and on a few days a year, when she wore her only party dress, you remembered that fact.

It is easy to lose track of who comes from where in Vekllei. About half of people were born overseas, and the other half have history in one of a dozen scattered republics that make up the country. It is a deeply multicultural society, a fact which is treasured and protected by the Commonwealth government.

At school, they wore the same uniforms every day, which made seeing your classmates at the end-of-term formal a shock. People you thought had lived here all their lives showed up in gowns of styles you’d never seen. And here was Tzipora, previously known as an Italian, a Gypsy, an Indian or whatever else they guessed of her, now revealed to be Colombian – as she always had been.