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 12: Who Are You?

• Now: A moment-old word that lives forever.

• The highest degree of satisfaction is embodied by a disapprobation that insists on you at the time, “Why do people frown?”

• Indignation: Feeling stupid to be happy a moment from now.

• Gratification: A renewed sensation of the effect of an elapsed boon.

• The magic of the word is that you can say anything, even what you can’t do.

• Sleep invites you to its dominion for free. You have to look for the other pleasures to pay for it.

• Sunday: The day on which the unemployed should be grateful.

• It is absurd to think time is so generous that it gives us something called emptiness.

• Happiness: That which is not guaranteed by money, fame, power, success, beauty, knowledge, satiety, comfort, safeness, or …

• I don’t know who made us assume that happiness is hidden so that we search for it; it is more cunning than being settled in a particular place.

• You: What you accustomed me to.

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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.