From a Pakistani American author comes a bracing memoir about tradition, upending expectations, and the volatility of family, friendship, and, inevitably, love.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Farah Naz Rishi’s Sorry for the Inconvenience, which is out July 1st 2024.
Pakistani American Farah Naz Rishi’s first year of college was perfectly, thankfully, uneventful. After all, she was in college to learn and forge a path of self-sufficiency, especially after her last relationship fell apart―dashing her mother’s aspirations for an early marriage. What could Farah expect, anyway? For the ideal guy to just conveniently waltz into her life? Life isn’t a love story.
Enter Stephen, a Jamaican student with an open smile and a disarmingly laid-back attitude. It’s not love at first sight. And there’s no way Farah’s mother would approve of him as marriage material. But they have something better: an inexplicable connection. Through a series of impossible tragedies, grief, and trying to find her place in the world, Stephen is always there as Farah’s confidant, champion, and, most of all, best friend. Anything more could ruin a perfectly good thing…Right?
Spanning thirteen years of complex family dynamics and a surprising kinship, Farah Naz Rishi’s story explores the unpredictability of love―familial, platonic, and romantic, but never truly instant.
Chapter 1
Like Summer
It’s embarrassing to admit—and it’s definitely up there with one of my more desperate, delusional moments in life—but one of the only reasons I decided to take a class at Haverford College was the prospect of meeting a boy. Preferably a nice Muslim boy my parents would actually approve of.
But as my fellow students filed into the classroom—ignorant of my silent appraisals as they simply minded their business—I realized none would be good enough for my parents. Hell, on most days, I wasn’t good enough for them.
A minute before class had started, and already my hopes were shattered.
To be fair, it was my fault for holding such ludicrous expectations. Would the love of my life just conveniently waltz into the same class I was taking at Haverford—in a Japanese Civilization class, of all options? No. If he existed, he’d be in some premed class, like biochem or How to Save Babies 101. Or he wouldn’t be on campus at all because he’d be busy saving some nice old lady’s cat from a tree.
Only I wanted to meet someone in college, and I couldn’t do that at Bryn Mawr, the all- women’s college I attended as a first-year student. And in my mind, I had to meet someone, if only to stop Mom from making snide comments about never finding anyone who could, in her words, “put up” with me.
So there I sat, in my Japanese Civilization class, sitting on my fingers to keep them warm (it was January, and freezing cold) and to stop myself from anxiously bouncing in my seat.
Finally—finally!—the last student arrived: a boy named Stephen, with warm, russet skin and close-cropped black curls, slightly smooshed on one side, like he’d just rolled out of bed. He wore flip-flops and khaki shorts in the middle of January, like he’d made the conscious decision to never acknowledge the existence of winter. And of all the available seats left, he chose to sit front and center—as if he hadn’t just ambled into class over five minutes late.
I watched Stephen from my seat at the back of the classroom, baffled. Not because I particularly cared about the tardiness of other students, but because I swear I’d sensed the world ripple around me the moment he’d walked in with that easy smile of his.
But 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. What I felt was more of an inevitable, inexplicable connection. I’d felt the same thing before, recently: with Kaya—another first-year in my hall, and the only other Asian. When our RAs forced the first-years to do icebreakers the day we’d moved in, Kaya had looked ready to bolt, like she wanted to be anywhere else but there. Watching her felt like looking in a mirror, and, naturally, we became fast friends.
With Kaya, that feeling was reassuring. With Stephen, though—I felt myself scowling. Maybe it was the palpable way Stephen had stumbled into my life out of nowhere, tripping over my loose threads. A promise of an inevitable unraveling. When I saw him, that ripple in the world felt like a warning that this person was about to change my life, forever, and I couldn’t predict how yet.
I dismissed the warning. It had to have been all in my head. After all, Stephen was emblematic of a Haverford boy: ridiculous and sloppy and inconsiderate. I mean, flip-flops in the snow? Being that unapologetically late to your first class? If anything, he was a perfect example of why I would never find my future husband at college. No, no, no, clearly the situation was hopeless. And as our professor read from the syllabus, I decided that if I wanted to avoid becoming like Mom and replicating her mess of a marriage, I was better off tossing the idea of marriage in the garbage altogether.
At least I could tell Mom I tried, and now I was free! No more talk of being introduced to young men from my family’s Pakistani community! No more being asked if I’d somehow scared away all the good Muslim boys with my uniquely strong case of RBF! I did my due diligence, but there were simply no options, and now I could focus solely on learning and forging a path to self- sufficiency. What a concept.
I settled in my seat, pleased—at least until Professor Tanaka announced that we would be required to get into assigned groups for a project presentation. And like a ridiculous setup for some young adult rom-com novel, I was put in a group with him.
Our group had four people: me, Stephen, Cecilia, and Meg. I was the only first-year student. Cecilia was a Haverford student who’d been born and raised in France. Everything about her screamed French: she was tall, effortlessly pretty, and could probably wear a potato sack and make it work. Meg was a Bryn Mawr student and wore black combat boots (very cool, in my opinion) and a small neon-pink-and-black backpack with a Hello Kitty character, Badtz-Maru, on it. And Stephen was . . . someone I’d rather avoid.
It took the four of us weeks to coordinate a time to meet, in part because no one wanted to be the first to reach out. Eventually it was Stephen who emailed everyone, and resorted to calling me when I never emailed him back. When I realized it was him on the other end of the line, I nearly dropped my phone in panic. I didn’t want to talk to him. I just wanted to get through the project and be done with it.
Even though I’d come across as rudely frosty when I picked up the phone, Stephen remained relaxed, polite. Unbothered.
“So I’m thinking it’d just be easier to meet at Haverford,” he said. “We probably only need one in-person meeting, and then we can coordinate the rest through email. What about you? What do you think?”
“Huh?” I’d been pacing around my dorm room, and his question stopped me. “Have any thoughts on the plan?” he asked again.
“Oh. Um, no. It makes sense.” It did mean Meg and I would have to take a ten-minute bus ride to Haverford, so that was annoying. But I kept my mouth shut. “Have you asked everyone else yet? Are Meg and Cecilia on board?”
“No, not yet,” Stephen answered, hesitating. “I called you first, sorry. But I’ll ask the others after this.”
I couldn’t help wondering why Stephen called me first, but I decided not to think any more of it. There was probably no significance to it.
“All right,” I said. “Just text me if everyone’s on board, and I’ll see you there.” “Great!” Stephen’s enthusiasm on the other line was palpable. “See you soon.”
When I hung up, I felt confused. I’d thought of myself as someone who was fairly good at reading people. But I was starting to think that Stephen wasn’t ridiculous or sloppy or inconsiderate at all. If anything, he was so disarmingly friendly I hadn’t realized, until the phone call was over, that he’d effectively melted the frostiness I’d encased myself in.
I’d never met anyone like that before.
