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from Love: the rhythms of the interior world
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 February 2010
Once upon a time, King Shehriyaar decided to visit his brother in faraway Samarkand. When he had travelled for a few hours, he remembered that he had left something in his palace and returned speedily. To his great shock he surprised his queen dallying with a black slave. He killed both and arrived at his brother's in a state of great depression. But by accident he witnessed there his brother's queen indulging in a far more outrageous orgy, and his happiness was restored. Eventually he confessed to his brother the reason for his changed mood, and in disgust they both rode off- only to meet a demon who had been cuckolded innumerable times by the girl he kept captive. Their spirits revived, they returned to their respective palaces. Shehriyaar made sure that no further humiliation of this kind could happen to him. Every day he married a virgin, spent the night with her, and had her killed the next morning. After a while no virgins were left in the town, and his wazir was forced to supply his own daughter, Shehrezaad. She was as clever as she was chaste and beautiful. And so she began to tell a story which daybreak interrupted; since the king was eager to hear the end of it, he spared her for one day. Naturally, a second story followed during the second night, to be similarly interrupted.
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