Sorry for the Inconvenience: A Memoir

by Farah Naz Rishi

so much of what we refer to as “nonfiction” relies on our perception of the world and the events unfolding around us. Nonfiction is based on real things that actually happened, yes, but nonfiction is never exactly the full truth: it is our brains seeing ourselves in the mirror and wondering why our head is so big.

easy smile of his. It wasn’t love at first sight. I don’t believe in love at first sight. What even is that? A person can’t love someone they don’t know. Love is many things, but it isn’t, by my definition, instant

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.

My instinct was especially strong, built over years of growing up in a small, majority-white town in the suburbs of Pennsylvania. I was searching, always searching, for anyone who looked even vaguely like me and my family.

“The Velveteen Rabbit.” I liked that the velveteen rabbit—a little stuffed bunny—had learned to be vulnerable through love, and even when he was abandoned by the boy who’d loved him, he was rewarded with finding himself, his “real” self. It was a story about the transformative power of love and heartbreak.

be steadfast with religion, but appreciate and enjoy the gift of life. And good music, he felt, brought us closer to God.

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.

If this was where all those late-night Facebook chats got me, maybe what Mom had said back in fourth grade was true. Maybe all that mattered—all that ever mattered—was focusing on school.

He didn’t seem annoyed by my anxiety. Didn’t question it. Instead, he simply began hooking up an extra Nintendo 64 controller, excitement wafting off his shoulders as he whistled.

I was safe with Stephen. It wasn’t so much because he hadn’t done anything to me while I slept—God, the bar is so, so low—but more that I finally understood the idea would have never even occurred to him. That the only thought he’d had was to put a blanket over me to make sure I was warm. The realization

lonely people know what to say to other lonely people.

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

I’ve always hated that phrase. Half the time, whenever someone says It’s not personal, it feels like a get-out-of-jail-free card. It’s a way to refuse responsibility for hurting someone.

perhaps that was the problem with finding someone whose company you enjoy; the world without them feels dulled. You become greedy for their presence, even when you’re too afraid to ask for it.

With him, I realized, arguments didn’t have to be conflict, didn’t have to be battles to be won. They could be about connecting and reconnecting.

But despite the suspicions in the back of my mind, I was still too naive to understand that someone saying they’ve changed—so confidently, always so sure—often means that they are certain they can convince you of their growth.

real, meaningful change needs no announcement. Real change speaks for itself.

Perhaps this is why we forgive people who don’t deserve it: nostalgia is a hell of a drug. It blurred all the bad, brightened the scant good, and told you pretty lies.

It was nice having a real job, where I could get out of the house. Living at home felt miserable. Mom constantly hovered. I had a curfew again. If I left the house, I had to explain where I was going, whom I’d be with, and when I’d be coming back. When I didn’t leave the house, Mom would ask why I had no social life.

I liked being in his garden. And Dad loved gardening because he believed it was an act of worship. Gardening reminded him that God exists, that God must exist, because how else could one plant a mere seed into the dirt and watch as the earth itself would transform it with only a little water and tiny bees to act as stewards? And soon that tiny, seemingly insignificant seed would be replaced by a flower, a tree, even fruit to eat. And is that not amazing? he’d say with all the passion of a Sufi poet. Does it not make you believe in the beauty of the world?

I wanted to fall in love, naturally, organically, to experience a whole falling-in-love montage.

Yusuf and I also had similar values: We both prioritized education. We both valued our faith. We both tried to pray five times a day, though sometimes the day would get ahead of us, and we’d miss a prayer or two—and we both wanted to be better at that. We also wanted to find love in a halal way: find a marriage candidate, get to know them, and if things looked promising, get our families involved. The latter part would be easy for us, at least: in typical Pakistani American fashion, our families already distantly knew each other—some second cousin of mine had married one of his second cousins. Very convenient.

“The way you have put a lot of thought into which school you want to attend, what career you want—this is the kind of thought you need to put into who you’re going to marry,” he said. “More so, maybe. These are the most important choices you make in life; the same way your school and career will help you go where you want to go, your partner will help you become who you want to be.

I was surprised by my own boldness, but the one good thing that had come out of that experience with Yusuf was that I dared to ask for what I really wanted. I wanted to spoil myself a little.

“I’m busy all the time. But I almost have to be, because the moment I let myself rest, I start missing the people back home, you know?”

“Farah, you have dreams about everyone dying. You’re not a psychic. You’re just, I don’t know, anxious.”

Obviously this was a thing with me—I had this unexplainable fear that death would take everyone I cared about away from me, that death was this unstoppable force that could pounce at any moment.

It was a bad habit of mine to envision the worst-case scenario, an almost compulsive need to prepare myself for the worst possibilities.

I didn’t even attend my law school graduation. I couldn’t have cared less.

“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.”

When I was done, I felt different. I felt unbound. As if giving voice to my deepest fears had allowed me to face them, to see that they were nothing but that: fears. Not real, if I didn’t want them to be.

Life was too short to care about things that didn’t matter.

Allah (SWT), please bless me and my family, and keep us on the straight path, and protect us from any harm or danger.

Also, Allah (SWT), if you can make me not fail my law school exams, that would be great. Please. Or Please, Allah (SWT), if you could make me a good writer, that would be highly appreciated—thank you!

Music felt like proof that I was alive, the way it brought goose bumps to my skin, the way it made my heart beat even faster. I was alive, because despite everything, music still made me feel.

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 house.

it’s hard to recognize love and all its forms when you’ve never seen it before.

What if love was a patient thing that simply stood at your side, offering you a hand? What if it was all the best of friendships—a partnership, a promise to face the unfeeling world and all its follies together? Or simply the quiet, intimate details of a person, like how their lips part when they sleep, how they take their coffee, their preferences in tea?

“Today was hard,” she said. “Your dad is angry. At God. He kept going on about how there was so much he still wanted to do, all these things he still wanted to accomplish. But every time people come to visit him, they tell him that it’s God’s will, a test from God. Who the hell wants to hear that when they’re dying?” I clenched my jaw. Allah is the best of planners. Hadn’t Dad always believed this? Hadn’t I? And despite everything, I still wanted to. It was a singular source of comfort when trying to search for patterns of meaning, to make sense of a horrible situation. But it felt cruel to tell someone to look for the light, for the silver lining, when they were fumbling through an endless, swallowing dark.

Whispers of a prayer for the dead: Inna lillahi wa inallah-e-raji’oon. Verily, to God we belong and to God we shall return.

I loved that in a world that worked so desperately to cut us at every angle, my brother had chosen to hold on to his softness.

The profound, perhaps inevitable realization that your parents are just people—with flaws and imperfections—feels like mourning. The mom I’d hoped for—the mom I was so certain would appear if I was just a good enough daughter—was gone. That the same hands meant to raise me with love and care were also so easily capable of choking me the moment I didn’t do as prescribed.

What would loving him feel like? I wondered. What would it feel like, a love so soft and safe and warm in my palms, all earnest vulnerability? Like a baby bird cradled safely against my chest. A love you could release, knowing it would fly safely back to you in every scenario, in every universe. Lately, I found myself wanting to try.

Muslim burials happen fast, usually within three days; according to Islamic tradition, it was important to respect the body of the dead and allow it to be placed back into the earth as quickly as possible.

Sometimes I wondered if people used religion as an excuse to ignore the humanity of others, and instead reduce them to their sins.

So surely with hardship comes ease. Verily, with hardship comes ease.

My therapist and I had spent hours talking about narcissistic parents: how they desire to be the center of attention, how they see their children as mere extensions of themselves. The gaslighting and blaming. The moment he’d described the traits of a narcissistic mother, it was like all the pieces, all the questions of my life, came together.

“In her mind, your mom could very well love you, in her own way,” my therapist had said. “But many narcissists or those with narcissistic tendencies are often—not always, but often—unequipped with the language to show it in a healthy way. Love, or even healthy conflict, is a skill she hasn’t quite learned.”

But I was terrified about having picked up trauma from Mom, from internalizing an unhealthy way to care for my own child. I didn’t want to perpetuate the cycle. The safest thing, I decided, was to not have kids at all.

It’s understandable to feel that way, he’d said. Of course you’d feel that way after everything. But I think faith is never easy. That’s why it’s faith. You can always ease back into it when you’re ready. For now, just focus on being a good person; the rest will follow.