By Sudanese-born prolific author Amr Muneer Dahab

nasdahab@gmail.com

In “Wisdom Highway,” translated into English from the Arabic origin by the author himself, Sudanese-born poet and essayist Amr Muneer Dahab questions ideas that people accept as standard rules for living, aiming to make individual life paths easier to navigate rather than providing rigid success formulas. He uses short, witty statements to prompt deep thought ins. In this series of posts, the prolific author shares excerpts from the book.

Week 10: What Is Schadenfreude?

• While we dress our mistakes horribly, confession is an undressing we prefer to practice elegantly.

• The greatest magnet in existence is that which attracts us toward our mistakes that we insist on committing and stickle not to admit.

• Humans often forget their pain after they have overcome it, but they are constantly in a state of forgetting the mistakes they commit.

• It tempts you to sit in front of it and then it takes away any right to dialogue even if you don’t like what it says: TV.

• History: That imposing majesty that overwhelms things just because they are old.

• Prison: A spacious expanse you are forbidden to go behind.

• The house: Those walls that we put up to reject others.

• Silence: An implicit acknowledgment of contentment, astonishment, overwhelming joy, confusion, and a sudden act in the hours of serenity. It is, as well, the most eloquent of what we practice when a lot of people rush to talk.

• The impossible is all that we dream about and cannot achieve under the sun. What falls outside this range we do not usually think about.

• Its concept will not be complete before we are given the opportunity to put all these complications in the interpretation of existence and then they slip into its hollow: The absurd.

• Although we cite it as a symbol of the originality of the substance, our use of it does not go beyond flaunting the appearance: Gold.

• Schadenfreude: The highest degree of envy.

• While the judge can be compared to the righteous son of the law, the lawyer is its disobedient son who always helps others get around it.

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Amr Muneer Dahab is a Sudanese-born passionate essayist, literary critic and poet. An electrical engineer living in the United Arab Emirates, he juggles his professional career and writing, which has birthed so far 50 books.