To what does the title of Vladimir Nabokov's short work "That In Aleppo Once" refer?

The title of Vladimir Nabokov’s work of short fiction
titled “That in Aleppo Once” clearly alludes to the famous closing speech made by
Othello at the conclusion of William Shakespeare’s very well-known tragedy
Othello. By the time Othello makes this speech, he has been duped
and maddened by the trickery of the evil schemer, Iago, who has managed to make Othello
almost insanely suspicious of Othello’s wife, Desdemona. Thanks to the doubts sowed by
Iago, Othello assumes that Desdemona is cheating on him with Othello’s own lieutenant,
Cassio, a good man whom Iago despises. Ultimately, Othello strangles Desdemona in their
bed, realizing only after her death that he has made a horrible mistake not only in
killing her but in judging her so wrongly.

In his famous
final speech, he reminds the Venetians who have come to apprehend him that he has long
been a loyal servant and officer of Venice. He asks the assembled persons, when they
relate the story of his tragedy, to describe him as “one that lov’d not wisely but too
well” (5.7.344), and he asks them also to

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. . . say besides, that in Aleppo
once,

Where a malignant and turban’d
Turk

Beat a Venetian and traduc’d the
state,

I took by th’ throat the circumcised
dog,

And smote his – thus.   [He stabs
himself] 
(5.7.352-56)

Othello, in
other words, punishes himself at least as violently as (if not more violently than) he
punished the non-Christian who once insulted Venice. Othello believes that he deserves
to die for having killed Desdemona and also for having failed in his responsibilities to
Venice.

The allusion implicit in Nabokov’s title is
appropriate in a work dealing, as Nabokov does, with extreme marital complications and
with a protagonist who ultimately feels so frustrated and
unhappy.

Nabokov’s story alludes elsewhere to
Othello, as in the opening words of the story’s final paragraph:
“Yet the pity of it,” which echoes another statement by Othello
earlier in the play (4.1.195). There is even, perhaps, a pun on Othello’s ethnic
identity in the story’s final paragraph, where a “moored fishing boat” is mentioned.
Like Othello, the main character of Nabokov’s story feels that he has made “some fatal
mistake.” Perhaps the final paragraph of the story even implies that the main character
is contemplating suicide.