Now that we are brothers and friends, I would have you know that there is also a story hidden in my life, and it is so astonishing that, if it were written with needles on the interior corner of an eye, yet would it prove a lesson to the circumspect. I will tell it to you now, as I wish you to know what I am and what I have been, before we take up our pleasant life together.

The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (1964, Vol. IV)

Preface