Tahrish
A poem by Vaishnavi Pusapati

Tahrish

Imagine tambourines, imagine flowers blooming on cacti,
imagine a party of women gathering in the desert,
imagine the fragrance of a feast dispersing into the desert wind,
to celebrate a woman’s divorce, to sing her praises,
to see what is found over what is lost.
That is Tahrish, for the Mauritanian woman,
Divorce parties, that sound oxymoronic, elsewhere, here they are
one of those rare feminist traditions, even in the modern world.

Painted henna on her hands,
she rewrites the destiny on her palm lines,
decked with bangles jingling,
her face decorated with makeup and more importantly, joy;
Dressed in her best, she comes home, and she celebrates,
And the village women, and her family celebrate her, her return,
like it was her wedding, like it was New Year’s Eve;
and the rest of the world hasn’t thought of it.

Imagine the weightlessness of a failed relationship,
gone with the wind, thrown into darkness like a page,
of a book that shall not be read again.
Imagine the veil of shame tied to divorced women, lifted
That is Tahrish, in the desert, women celebrate women, a homecoming.
Imagine happy endings. Imagine tambourines.

About the Author:

Vaishnavi Pusapati is a physician and poet, who has previously published over forty poems in various magazines and journals like Palisades Review, Prole, Havik, Dreich, Shot Glass, Molecule, Five Minutes, among others.

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