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.

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.

She wanted to watch me experience the world in a way she could not. In her eyes, I was the vessel for all the broken hopes and dreams so cruelly torn from her.

To keep myself from fuming, I had to remind myself that my mom had grown up in a different time. Her own mother was abusive and paranoid, her own cheeks more familiar with vindictive slaps than soft kisses. So who, then, could possibly blame her for doing the same every now and then?

i’m not really sure if this is an immigrant child trope, or just standard for children— but boy, do i relate to justifying + rationalizing the behavior of your parents, because of the neglect or abuse that they themselves have experienced.

That was his policy, and the one he instilled in us: 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.

the one belief I absorbed at Sunday school, from which I never wavered, was that although we had control over our own actions, the events of life came preordained: “They were planning, and Allah was planning,” my dad would quote the Quran, “and Allah is the best of planners.”

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

But 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.

It was the first time I’d ever had a difficult conversation with someone who really listened to me, who didn’t gaslight me, who qualified their thoughts with I feel instead of I know. He spoke gently, every word laced with care. 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 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.

I think the feeling of not being where you were supposed to be—of watching the train of success leave you behind, while your friends ride it off into the sunset—was unbearable.

It was unfair, I thought, for everyone around me to lead their relatively normal, stable lives, untainted by death, while I bore the weight of Dad’s illness.

The promise of death, it seemed, had an uncanny way of rendering all other problems too small to care about.

Most of us will outlive our parents; we accept this. But watching your parents’ bodies be whittled down by disease is unsettling in ways that will haunt you for life. It was brutal to watch, brutal to leave.

At the end of every prayer, Muslims make a dua, a prayer within a prayer. But a dua is whispered into one’s own hands, like a secret. An intimate conversation between human and God. My duas have always sounded the same since I was a child: Allah (SWT), please bless me and my family, and keep us on the straight path, and protect us from any harm or danger.

In Islam, there is a hadith about a sex worker who found a stray dog. The day was unbearably hot, and the dog was dying of thirst. The sex worker had been on her way somewhere—perhaps she was in a hurry—but still, she took the time to fill her shoe with water from a well and give it to the dog. For this one simple act of kindness, God forgave her for her sins, and she was admitted into heaven.

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

One of my favorite passages in the Quran comes from a surah—a chapter—called “Surah Ash-Sharh” (The Relief). It reads, So surely with hardship comes ease. Verily, with hardship comes ease. Where, though, was my ease?

Inshallah: If Allah wills it. I wasn’t sure what my relationship with God was, if I even had one anymore. But for Maha, I’d pray.

There’s a hadith, a saying, in Islam that “a time of patience will come to people in which adhering to one’s religion is like grasping a hot coal.” But those days, I felt that God had burned my hand, my arm, my whole heart, in a way I’d never recover.

“Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.”