SO what was it, then, that saved Scheherazade? The Thousand and One Nights begins with memory. King Shahryar is a man who harbors revenge. He cannot forget that he was cuckolded by his Queen. He orders her to be beheaded, and adds a cruel program: every day he will take a woman to be his queen for one night, and the next day at daybreak, the 24-hour wife will be killed.

Women are all the same to him: woman is just a formula. Every formula expels t