PALEWELL PRESS

Antony Johae's intriguing prose memoir about the ongoing financial and political crises in Lebanon. These are lines written about Lebanon, lines of approach to Lebanon, and lines of communication which frequently get snarled up and become a tangle at both political and every-day practical levels.

Lines on Lebanon will launch in Colchester's Friends Meeting House on 13th September. You can order an advance copy from this page for £11.00 excluding postage.

Review by Sam Smith 19/2/26

Lines on Lebanon: Antony Johae  Palewell Press  www.palewellpress.co.uk  ISBN 978-1-911587-89-7  A5 100 pages  £11.00

What struck me most reading this, how relevant all of Lebanon’s history, including its present precarious state, is to all of us today, our fundamental uncertainty.

When editing The Journal I happily took many of Antony’s poems that described aspects of his life in both Lebanon and Kuwait that took me out of my own everyday. I’ve consequently been looking forward to this prose recounting of his days in Lebanon.

Begins with his marriage to Thérèse and background to their ceremony in Beirut, the history behind that moment, aftermath of an upheaval never quite over, persisting divisions, new enmities.

His tale of a semi-positive aftermath of bombing and shelling reminded me of when the IRA were planting bombs in London. The man I was working for then owned Chelsea Glassworks. He made a small fortune out of all the broken windows in that bombing campaign. As Antony relates of Lebanon, there are always unexpected outcomes, some beneficiaries.

More anecdotes than narratives, but rich in observation, there is humour here, stumblings over language. All the difficulties, official, of taking up life in another country.

So much to learn here, aspects and details beyond newspaper headlines, the persistence of ordinary lives wanting only to be ordinary. Because this is most definitely not just Antony’s story. Although Antony’s association with Lebanon began in 1985, and continues to this day; living conditions various, and foods, local names given. We are also given his mother-in-law Marie’s memories of beginning life in what had then been a French colony… One can easily start to think of the Lebanese as being a most unlucky people.

So much here also reminded me of my own travels amongst the war-torn, bullet-damaged buildings, mostly in my case of Cyprus; and how there as a stranger I had to negotiate division. Plus, as with Lebanon, the erratic water supply.

During his negotiation of Lebanon’s melange of languages I loved the tale of Antony finding his first book of poems on a Lebanese bookstore shelf, plus his selling out of a whole stack of books at a local book fair.

The newsworthy topical, unfortunately for Lebanon, is never far away. The book itself is dedicated to those who lost their lives in the Beirut Port bomb explosion, 4th August 2020. Antony tells of a visit to a Palestinian refugee camp, the Naqba ever present, relevant. He notes all the different peoples from so many countries, migrants and refugees, ending up – if briefly – in Lebanon. Difference between migrants, cheap labour, and refugees, no status and therefore no money. Again I was reminded, of his description of the refugees having to beg, of my time in Bombay.

Antony tells of his ongoing involvement with family past and family new, of his fierce daughter and TV famous son-in-law; and of their dealing with local crises, lira devaluation, erratic water supply… See Cyprus.

As a traveller all his life Antony knows that one must set forth in hope. He ends with a utopian vision of his successors in Lebanon in 2125.

© human author Sam Smith 19th February 2026