Sorry for the Inconvenience: A Memoir

by Farah Naz Rishi

I wanted the kind of mom I’d see on TV, or the kind of South Asian mom who oiled their daughter’s hair and smothered their children in kisses—whenever they were proud, or whenever their child was sad. Or simply just because. Mom was always different.

Except cruelty can also be stealthy and insidious. Like dismissing one’s feelings, over and over again—until one day you start to forget how to feel anything. That’s the kind of cruelty that is hardest to recognize. And even if you can point to it, name it, it’s often too late. The damage has been done.

That’s the beauty of siblings, I think. You don’t need words. After growing up in the same dysfunctional household for years, you develop your own special telepathy, your own secret language: of facial expressions only the two of you can read, of inside jokes only the two of you understand, of memories only the two of you share.

You get each other, perhaps in a way no one else ever will. From his bed, Shaz, with an exasperated

hated being in a world that demanded women protect themselves instead of punishing the men who would harm them in the first place.

“The artist deals with what cannot be said in words,” said Jeanne, quoting Ursula K. Le Guin on our first day of class. “The novelist says in words what cannot be said in words.” So

As I sat next to her, day after day—watched her diagnose and eviscerate any short story that crossed her desk with razor-sharp precision, even her own writing—I began to wonder if this girl could take on the entire publishing world. When I read her work, watched her skills bloom at an almost frightening rate, I decided she actually would. She’d already sold books. I found her incredible; she was only twenty years old, but she’d poured

“Being a writer feels so vulnerable. And your job is to think about characters, understand how they’re feeling. You’re trained to care about what other people think. But now I find myself wondering what other people are thinking all the time. Questions that haunt me at night. Like, what if people hate my work? What if—what if I write what I want to write, but other Muslims call me sinful? What if I’m just not good enough, no matter what I do? I’m so freaking terrified.” Anne Marie asked if she

Think of it this way. We live in a dark, chaotic world, so we build structures through art to feel safe in it. The same way people build houses so they wouldn’t be at the mercy of the weather. Things like stories, games—these are emotional houses from the random crap that happens in our lives. Like getting sick. People dying. Reaping bad luck when you don’t deserve it. Art is a safe house, he said. Your writing—that’s your safe

New York City thrums with an electric life force that makes the hair on your arms stand on end with anticipation. A city where steel and scuzz come to a crossroads. It’s a city of overwhelming impossibility at every turn: with too many bodies, too much noise—too much of so much. The city will eat you and spit you out, and if you don’t learn how to dance in the stomach of the beast, you won’t make it out alive. There are those who say the city is overrated, romanticized: people with suitcases and preconceived expectations of grandeur. There are, admittedly,

But I found that losing them made me love harder. These small, brief moments of joy—I treasured them that much more. I