About The Yard• Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books; 1 edition (April 5, 2016)
• Publication Date: April 5, 2016

A story of love and redemption, set in Trinidad, that exposes the fault lines in Indo-Muslim culture. Behrooz is brought to a familial complex, The Yard, to live with a devout and extended family, where he struggles to belong. He forms a childish alliance with Maya, a wilful and rebellious girl, and his guardian’s daughter. After they share a night of adolescent tenderness, Maya, fearing retribution, flees to London. Behrooz painstakingly rebuilds his life and marries another. When tragedy strikes, Maya returns to her childhood home. There, she and Behrooz must face up to old demons. Can their love endure? Even after Maya is dealt the most righteous” blow of all?

Praise
A haunting tale of family, commitment, love...and being true to yourself.  --Roslyn Carrington, author of A Thirst for Rain

The author’s voice speaks in warm and sometimes cold filmic pictures of the universal language of love, honour, commitment, belief and family. When a remote outsider, a young boy, is drawn into and under the beguiling machinations of a devout extended family, there’s disruption in their cultural fabric and hierarchy, that challenges the decisions of a determined young girl’s head and heart. --Peter Jarrette - Author of Brighton Babylon

On a gem of an island, in a private family enclave, boy — orphaned, rough, longing for acceptance — meets girl — sophisticated, manipulative, afraid of tenderness. The Yard is a sensitive tale of romance, hurt and forgiveness skillfully spun by emergent author Aliyyah Eniath. --Barbara Bamberger Scott — Editor, A Woman’s Write


MY REVIEW:

4 stars.  I found this to be a beautiful story of family, life, and love. It's a coming of age story. I really enjoyed the setting and the chance to learn more about the Indo-Muslim culture. The characters really come alive. I could clearly visualize the scenes.  It pulled me in right from the beginning.  The description of how Behrooz was living by sneaking food from the old lady, and the way he was found with the body and all the flies swarming around was heartbreaking, as was him trying to sneak a sheet to sleep on. That's just the first example of a scene that was vivid. 

I couldn't like Maya at first.  She was unnecessarily nasty and had a bad attitude. Bratty little girl.  Of course, her attitude towards Behrooz changed as she grew older. She wasn't the only one that was mean, though.  The whole family was.  He was an outsider, and they were all so sheltered and clannish living behind those walls cut off from the outside world.

The writing style did throw me off just a bit.  In places, there was too much description and back story, what we call "info dumps".  I also felt the writer used too many commas and this made the reading not as smooth as I would have liked and distracted me a bit.  I know a lot of people like this flowery and descriptive writing style, but I am one of those people who like clean sentences without all the pauses that a comma makes. 

Disclaimer:  I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a review.  I was not required to leave a positive review, and all thoughts and opinions are my own.

​Cats Are Poetry
 
In your mind you hear
words snarling
all day long
but no poem arrives.
The words are locked
in a cat fight,
syllables flying.
 
You hope the words
sleep well tonight and
wake in orderly fashion,
the way your cats
stretch at dawn
and wait to be fed
with feline decorum.
 
In the morning
the poem arrives
word by word,
chips off a diamond,
so you stop shaving,
grab a pen and
take dictation.
 
You write the words
as you hear them,
tweak a line or two,
and go spelunking
in your mind for
the right title.
 
Later, in celebration,
you tote a blast horn
to the roof
of the building
and announce
what agnostics suspect
and atheists know:
 
Cats are poetry.
Dogs are prose.
 
 
Donal Mahoney

​A Sisyphus Moment
 
There’s a force that makes
a boulder hard to push up a hill.
And there’s always a boulder
and always a hill when it comes to 
helping the poor find something
to eat, somewhere to live, a job
they can go to every day.
 
Sometimes the boulder slips
and rolls back downhill
and Sisyphus jumps aside.
Accidents happen.
 
But sometimes the one 
who owns that hill says no
and blows his trumpet and gives
the boulder a mighty shove
and Sisyphus gets run over.
 
Then the poor must wait
a century longer
for another Sisyphus
to volunteer and get
behind the boulder.
 
No wonder the poor
are getting together
and grumbling louder.
They know Sisyphus isn't
the answer to the problem.
They must push the boulder.
 
 
Donal Mahoney

​Wife After Showering
 
Niagara Falls
her silver hair
 
so long it
bounces off
 
the swan
of her back
 
and off
her buttocks
 
as she laughs
and waves
 
a towel too long
saluting the sun
 
and us
who share
 
another
golden morning
 
 
Donal Mahoney

Photo by John Roland Bales





A Momma Cat Speaks Up


I tell you it’s not easy 
being a cat in Colorado
especially on this farm 
where I stopped on my way
to California.


This farmer gave me
a can of tuna 
and a bowl of milk.
I’d been on the road
and I was hungry.

So I decided to stay
with the farmer awhile
but one night Mr. Calico 
from down the road 
showed up. 

One thing led 
to another and I 
turned up pregnant.
I figured I’d better 
stay with the farmer 
a little longer.


I have to hand it
to Mr. Calico.
I had nine kittens,
tops for me so far,
although I had eight
with Mr. Black
back in Kansas.

It’s too late now
to head for California.
It’s fall here already
and I’d never make it
through the snow.


I’ll stay the winter
with this farmer.
He feeds me good
and has a shotgun
in case Mr. Calico 
comes back.


Donal Mahoney ​

​A Teacher, Long Retired, Remembers Jo Ellen Brown
 
It’s funny how strangers make your day, a teacher, long retired, told me the other day. A girl he didn't know came up to him at the Mall and introduced herself. She said she was Jo Ellen Brown's sister. She said Jo Ellen had always praised him as her favorite teacher. He told her he remembered Jo Ellen. She was a quiet girl from a little farm outside of town. Very smart. That was 20 years ago.
 
He told me he remembered once in class she was writing an Optimist essay and did a beautiful job. It sang, the prose was so fine, almost poetic but filled with facts. As a result, Jo Ellen and the teacher, were invited to come to the state capital for her to read her essay at the Optimist Convention. He and his wife spent three days with Jo Ellen. She had a wonderful time, first time a young farm girl had been to the big city.
 
On the way home the teacher’s wife asked Jo Ellen if she was going to college and she said she didn't know. Money was a problem but there were other problems as well. She was good on the farm and if she went to college, she would be missed. Her father needed her help.
 
During their three days at the Optimist Convention, the teacher and his wife did their best to convince Jo Ellen she could succeed in college. And Jo Ellen told her sister--the young “stranger” the teacher had met at the Mall that day--that her three days at the state capital changed her life. She said no one had ever told her before that she could be somebody. She remembered the teacher telling her she was already somebody. His wife chimed in and agreed.
 
Among poor kids self-esteem is almost always an issue, the old teacher told me. This is a problem teachers can see but parents often cannot because they may also suffer from it. Poverty can affect generation after generation.
 
As a senior in high school Jo Ellen wrote another essay as part of an admission process and as a result she received a scholarship to a state university.  She graduated with a double major and accepted a commission in the Air Force.  This quiet girl went on to become an officer who was promoted several times prior to meeting her husband and leaving the service. And now, as her sister told her former teacher, Jo Ellen has a nice family and has succeeded in business.
 
The retired teacher was pleased, of course, to hear that Jo Ellen remembers him. He said there are many roses in the garden of his memory. But Jo Ellen Brown is a distinct, beautiful moment. He can never forget her. He remembers a lot of his students but Jo Ellen Brown made his life as a teacher glow in the dark. 
 
 
Donal Mahoney

Email from an Old Boss, 85
 
After Saturday tennis I came home
took a nap and woke up dizzy
had trouble walking.
My balance was off so I went
to bed and slept 20 hours
got up still the same
so Molly took me to the ER
where they said maybe a stroke.
After seven hours of tests
no diagnosis except dehydration
and maybe a stroke so now it’s
wait to see my doc next week.
Till then drink lots of water,
eat what I can and sleep.
I use the walls and chairs
to get to the bathroom.
If the worst happens
Molly will let you know.
I gave her your address.
Maybe say a prayer for me.
 
 
Donal Mahoney

Lucas Gonzalez
Sushimania
 
What’s going on out there? Bobbi visited Sushimania only once, partly because the food was bad, but mostly because she had a frightening out-of-body experience while dining there.
It all started with an innocuous sip of sake. Bobbi had never been a fan of the liquor and on that evening, she almost began to spew vomit as she felt the odd flavor of fermented rice coat her throat. As it slid down her esophagus, she slipped into a slight paralyzed state, becoming increasingly aware that not only could she not find the abdominal strength, nor the gag reflex necessary to throw up, but she could not lift her arm as she struggled to cover her mouth.
I can’t move!
Her husband was too engrossed in his meal to notice, and each time the loaded conveyor came around with a new plate on its circular track, Jack grabbed yet another uninspired dish. Bobbi had felt something similar many times before, as she suffered from occasional sleep paralysis. But this was the first time that she felt that suffocating vulnerability in public, ; completely exposed and completely helpless, not one person in the restaurant understood what she was going through. Fortunately, she could still move her eyes, and she scanned the horizon, glimpsing vacant, see-through stares, and actively chewing jaws--up, down, stop, up, down, tongue licks soy sauce lips. However, this was no simple paralyzation, not like that ghostly dorm room incident. In Bobbi’s freshman year at college, she had shared a dorm with a night owl, a completely disrespectful, fun-seeking, clueless girl that would usually clamber back to the room hours after Bobbi had peacefully fallen under. One night, Bobbi awoke around 3am to a tremendous weight on her chest. Half-awake, with eyes struggling to open, she groggily muttered for her roommate to get the fuck off of her. Bobbi could see Sarah’s outline at the foot of her bed, watching.
Sarah, what the hell are you doing?
The shadowy weight began to remove itself, allowing Bobbi to lift herself from the bed a little further. As she rose to confront Sarah, she turned her head to the left where her roommate’s bed was, complete with a soundly sleeping Sarah. When Bobbi redirected her attention to the foot of her bed, the shadow had disappeared. Bobbi had been paralyzed. Though that time, it was with icy fear as opposed to hot, claustrophobic anxiety.
            Back at Sushimania, Bobbi still couldn’t move, but she felt a new, upwardly slipping sensation. Not quite weightlessness, as much as the kind of humbling head rush of realizing a bright idea. Bobbi felt this ideation physically moving upwards from her viscera, past her sake-sodden neck, rushing through her overly-salivating mouth, crowding her sinuses like some wild,  oneiric train, barley fitting through a tiny, subterranean mountain tunnel, almost hitting the sides of its enclosure with its unseen tumescence, flying into her neurotic brain, and then seeping through microscopic cracks in her skull, breezing by the fluffy locks of her overly-dyed brunette hair, and rising above her still immobile body.
The sushi’s pretty good, isn’t it, Bobbi?
And suddenly, Bobbi was looking down on herself and her husband, staring in awe at the tacky blue, red, orange sheen of the tableau of Sushimania. She could see even from the ceiling that Jack had asked that question in the rhetorical, not even glancing up from his ravenous sushi devouring. Bobbi’s body looked peaceful, considering the possible emergency medical attention it might be needing at that time. So continuing to ignore her physicality, Bobbi floated away, moving along the perimeter of the restaurant, before hovering directly above the kitchen, in the center of the room, the hub of the sad sushi conveyor’s wheel. Her vision became cloudy, obscured by steam, and swept further upward, into the ceiling exhaust vent, and out into Clark County’s early evening, purple-hued sky. Her sake-powered spirit continued to drift in the breeze, offering Bobbi glimpses of roofs at dusk, wind-blown lawns and cypress groves, at one moment flying alongside the meanest looking murder of crows, sensing something timeless among them—shrewd creatures with wings, able to recognize human faces and alert their ilk accordingly—and Bobbi found herself lofting downwards into the vent of a faded green warehouse building. From the vantage of the ceiling’s air vent, Bobbi looked directly over what looked like a guerilla rock concert. She heard fast Cumbia-inspired punk music being played by angry-looking, brown teenagers. She saw a little girl in a purple dress dance and smile, staring with doglike wonder at the band; with her limited attention span, the girl soon forgot her wonder and found the freedom of her dance again. Next to the small girl, a large-framed Dominican looking girl in an overwhelmingly multicolored dress danced, the linen hem of her skirt fluttering in wild frenzy. Without warning, the large girl ran out of Bobbi’s field of vision only to reappear moments later with a concerned look on her heavily-featured face that appeared to assuage itself through the continuation of dancing, the strong swaying of her body expelling consternation, grounding the girl in stable contentment. A Christmas-colored sequence of overhead lighting painted the warehouse’s interior with warmth and expectation, and Bobbi could make out an immense, latticed window on the wall directly behind the band, offering violet shades of the mystical Clark dusk variety, all casting the band members in an unearthly glow. Bobbi’s new body was represented by a single chain suspended beneath her ceiling vent’s vantage, dangling from the ceiling, a sentient metal extremity, collecting sensitive stimuli, vibrating with infectious Latin rhythms and iron emotions. The pounding from the bass drum began reverberating louder and louder and Bobbi’s vision went from blurry to black. Instantaneously, she found herself back within her normal body, staring into a tiny cup of sake, still clutched in her hand. The whole ordeal felt, in the very least, to have lasted a good half-hour, though it could have only been a second.
When Bobbi later asked Jack if he had noticed her acting strangely at the restaurant, he said he hadn’t noticed anything as he was too busy eating. The sushi conveyor continued cycling.