Sorry for the Inconvenience: A Memoir

by Farah Naz Rishi

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.

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.

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.

“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.

There was no need to hurry. Not with Yusuf or anyone. Not with anything.

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

nepenthe, literally “that which chases away sorrow.”

“The artist deals with what cannot be said in words,”

all their stress would leak out in quick, frantic bursts. These were the moments where death would show itself and make them remember just how unprepared they were. Which meant, they soon realized, how unprepared their kids were. They began taking turns teaching me things, in an erratic, desperate sort of way.

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.

“Even though he cheated, your dad was still one of the best Muslims I know. But if your dad is angry at God, then what hope is there for the rest of us? How am I not supposed to feel angry, too?”

dead: Inna lillahi wa inallah-e-raji’oon. Verily, to God we belong and to God we shall return.

But what was the prayer for the people left behind?

I vaguely wondered what happened to a bee colony when their queen dies. I wondered if it felt like this.

In that moment, the curse of being the eldest daughter in a brown family was more apparent than ever. You are trained since birth to put others before you, to put family first, while you remain an afterthought even to yourself. All the while, you are also a translator and therapist, advocate and secretary. You are a punching bag and a guinea pig. And you are Atlas. Forced to carry the weight of the world, watching life unfold around you and without you, as you slowly crumble beneath the burden—lonely and weary and forgotten.

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

“Surah Ash-Sharh” (The Relief). It reads, So surely with hardship comes ease. Verily, with hardship comes ease.

Writing, I’d told Jeremy, was pain—it didn’t come naturally to me, and sometimes every word felt like a tooth pulled. The satisfaction came when I’d reread what I wrote.

ennui.

Inshallah: If Allah wills it.

“a time of patience will come to people in which adhering to one’s religion is like grasping a hot coal.”

Verily, with hardship comes ease.

“Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.” That was precisely what this wedding felt like: communion. Healing.

Love—maybe love simply sees you in a room when no one else does. Love was a pat on the head at the end of a hard day, a kind word of acknowledgment in a world so damn hard to live in. Love was refuge. Love was comfort. Love was ease. And, sometimes, that was enough to hold on to.

no matter how much stronger I thought I’d become, how much better I’d become at standing up for myself, if I only spent enough time with Mom, I’d regress to my teenage self: passive and painfully unsure and desperate for a mother who’d accept me.