Back to her roots: Trinidadian author Aliyyah Eniath talks about her debut book

The Indian community in Trinidad lends colour and depth to her narrative. “We have the same large, extended families, and practice what you guys practice here traditionally,” she says, “My grandmother watched Indian movies. I grew up knowing Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan and other actors. My mother is an Indian dancer.”

While the narrative is fictional, some of the details are borrowed from real life. The story of the family, who had moved to the country during the indentureship period, and eventually became flourishing business owners, in the book, reflects her own too. Her family owns a printing business, a background which led her to develop keen interest in literature.

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“There was always going to be a book. But when I read Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, I wanted to write a book like that,” says the author. Even ‘the yard’, which has given the book its title, is a real housing complex. “My father grew up there. It is just as I have described — a close knit family, and everybody interferes in everybody’s business,” she says.

A much deeper aspect in her book, however, that Eniath is keen on talking about, is the changing Hindu-Muslim culture in her country. “Some of the Muslims are changing and becoming extremely religious. Earlier, in Trinidad, you didn’t really grow up knowing if you are a Hindu or a Muslim,” says she.

In the book, father Khalid adopts a boy against the wishes of his family, who think that this is “not the religious thing to do”. “I wanted to talk about people acting out from their heart instead of following the strict literal application of the religious texts while taking a decision,” she says. The last decade, she notes, has seen this change, especially among the youth. “This is just a section of the Muslim population, not all. A few people I know have gone to Syria to join the ISIS,” she says, “For me, this has been traumatic, and I wanted to put emphasis on this.”