With new canvases of Ayaz Jokhio at his studio, I was trying to navigate his concept, till a simple, regular and much repeated question helped me find my way into his work. Responding to a query about books, Jokhio shared his recent reading of The Thousand and One Nights in Abul-Hassan Mansur Ahmed’s brilliant Urdu translation. The discussion then drifted to the structure of this classic, how stories are interwoven as one emerges out of another ad infinitum. Suddenly his paintings started to unravel.