In November or December 2023, a friend and I traveled from Ankara to Nurhak, a district of Kahramanmaraş, and then to the village of Bohşin in Antakya. Our goal on this journey was to meet children in regions affected by the earthquake centered in Kahramanmaraş in 2022 and organize workshops for them. The story you are about to read is a gift from this journey.
One day, I dream of translating this story into Arabic for the children of Bohşin, who know very little Turkish, and distribute it to them. Until then, let’s take a ride on the Dolmusch and see what two friends can create with their own strength.
The Newspaper of Strange Things
In a certain part of a certain town, there were two friends named Arme and Mojo, who loved spending time together. Their friendship had started when they were very young and was bound to last for many years to come.
One afternoon, two friends met up to play. But Arme had something on his mind that had been bothering him for a while. As soon as Mojo greeted her with a “Hey, what’s up, Arme?”, Arme blurted out what he was thinking.
-“Someone needs to interview me right away, Mojo.”
-“Arme, why do you want someone to interview you? I’ve never heard of anyone needing that before,” Mojo replied.
-“There are thousands of living beings in this world. I’m curious about all of them. And I need to tell them about myself.”
-“Living beings in the world? I’ve never thought about that before. To be honest, I’m not even that curious about our classmates,” Mojo said.
-“Why not?”
-“My family and my friendship with you seem interesting enough to me,” Mojo said.
Arme didn’t respond for a while; thoughts about interviews kept swirling in her head.
-“I’m frustrated, Mojo. To be someone who gets interviewed, you either have to invent something or be important. I’m ten years old. I don’t want to wait until I grow up to invent something or become important. And I just realized that we don’t even have a school newspaper! Why doesn’t anyone publish a newspaper in such a big school?”
That night, after Mojo had gone home, their conversation kept running through his mind. Arme’s desire to talk to other living beings intrigued him. Mojo often talked about too many things, but she never expected a response. Then, suddenly, he closed her eyes and imagined all the living beings on Earth. Fish, owls, kangaroos, crocodiles, tigers… There were just as many plants, and even ones so tiny they couldn’t be seen with the naked eye… There were so many!
In the middle of the night, Mojo sat up in bed with a mind-blowing idea. He could start a school newspaper for his friend! Just because no one had done it before didn’t mean they couldn’t. She formed a plan in her head: the next day, he would go from class to class announcing that they were gathering a team for a school newspaper. After school, the volunteers would meet to get started. Since she had only recently learned how to write, he definitely needed some help. At least one of the team members had to be better at reading and writing than he was.
The next morning, excited by her plan, Mojo got ready early and arrived at school. He entered the classroom with joy. Arme was already at his desk, staring out the window, looking quite gloomy.
-“How are you, Arme?” Mojo asked as she sat next to him.
-“You know… same as usual, Mojo,” Arme shrugged.
-“I was going to surprise you, but you look so down, so I won’t make you wait. Let me tell you the plan I came up with last night!” Mojo said.
As Arme listened, his expression slowly turned from gloomy to excited. That day, they had only one goal at school, and it wasn’t their lessons…
Mojo and Arme spent the entire day dashing from their desks to different classrooms whenever the bell rang. Their homeroom teacher noticed their unusual behavior. During the next lesson, she asked, “What’s going on with you two today?” The children answered at the same time in their excitement, but the teacher couldn’t understand a word. She asked Arme to explain by himself.
-“Mojo and I are starting a school newspaper, teacher! During recess, we’re spreading the news to the other classes so we can gather a team. We’re meeting with interested students after school by the field to get things started!” Arme explained.
The teacher was surprised. “So, you’re starting a school newspaper and inviting people to join your team. Can I be part of it too?” she asked.
Mojo and Arme nearly screamed with excitement as they hugged each other. Ms. Alma was joining their team! They hadn’t even considered that. Mojo’s concerns about reading and writing were solved on the spot—they had found a very knowledgeable teammate.
After school, four students showed up for the meeting. Their names were Kiki, Jona, Loco, and Keke. And, of course, Ms. Alma was there too. Mojo and Arme explained why they wanted to start a newspaper. Each new team member had a special skill or interest they wanted to share in the newspaper. Ms. Alma listened quietly as they got to know each other.
The children discussed how the school newspaper would work. Ms. Alma helped assign tasks. Mojo and Loco would research and publish mysterious, little-known facts. Kiki, who loved drawing cartoons, would illustrate funny school events. Jona and Keke would handle interviews. And Arme? She would study ways to communicate with non-human beings—and finally get her own interview!
By the end of the meeting, the children felt like heroes who had just gained superpowers. They were working on their favorite topics and would soon share them with the entire school.
A few days later, Arme had a dream where a mushroom living on a tree trunk spoke to him. The green and brown wavy mushroom told him, “You’re on the right path, kid. Keep doing what you’re doing, and you’ll understand how to talk to us.” It was probably because he had visited her neighbor Mo, but to Arme, it felt like a strange and powerful message.
Mojo, on the other hand, was learning incredible things for the newspaper. Like how every living being sees the world differently—animals, humans, bacteria, and plants all perceive things in unique ways. And did you know there’s a single-celled creature called a paramecium? No way!
As they walked home,
“Something really strange happened, my friend…” said Arme. “In my dream, a mushroom talked to me! Can you believe it? According to our neighbor Mo, I might be able to talk to them too. I didn’t fully understand what he said about it, but he mentioned that I could do it in a slightly different way. Mo is a mycologist, meaning a mushroom scientist, and he has a mushroom room in his house. You have to see it! It’s a tiny, steam-filled room with mushrooms of all sorts of strange colors and shapes. He said that mushrooms change shape depending on sunlight and that they love sugar just like we do,” she said.
“Arme, that’s amazing. Ever since I started working for the newspaper, I’ve been having the craziest dreams! I wander through super universes filled with dragons and green creatures like a knight… I love working for the newspaper, my friend,” he said. They threw their arms around each other’s shoulders and walked on, talking non-stop.
The children’s busy work schedule made time fly by, and the day they had been waiting for arrived quickly.
That morning, Ms. Alma woke up an hour earlier than usual to go to the printing house and pick up the newspapers. The children had also woken up early—actually, none of them had slept at all during the night. They met in the teachers’ lounge as planned in the morning and examined the newspapers together.
The first page, or the cover, was a bit boring, just like any other written document. It had a title, a date, and some numbers. But right in the middle of the page was Kiki’s cartoon, which made things a lot funnier. Kiki had drawn a long queue of people waiting for the newspaper to be published. In the line, there were giant blue elephants dressed in human clothes, carrying children who had fainted from waiting too long to the infirmary! The children loved the cartoon.
On the page right after the cover was the mysterious and unknown facts article prepared by Mojo and Loco. They had dedicated two whole pages to Ancient Egyptian civilization. There were pyramids, mummified pharaohs, information about gods, and drawings. Loco had been fascinated by Ancient Egypt since he was six, and for the past two years, she had been learning Hieroglyphics, the Egyptian writing system made up of pictures. His dream was to visit the pyramids one day and read the inscriptions inside. Mojo, on the other hand, had been full of jokes ever since he learned about the mummification process and that there had once been a pharaoh named Tutankhamun who was around their age. He thought she could tell her siblings that he was Tutankhamun’s time-traveling twin, or she could wrap himself up in toilet paper, dress as a mummy, and scare them…
The next page featured an interview Jona and Keke had done with Arme. Jona and Keke had asked very skillful questions. After the interview, the next page contained Arme’s research on non-human beings. Arme had written about his adventure with the mushrooms. Her first article, in which he introduced himself to the living and non-living things on Earth, was published on the very last page of the newspaper.
After flipping through every page of the newspaper, the children returned to Arme’s interview. They were really curious about it, so they all read it together, laughing out loud. After all, the idea for The Weird Things Newspaper had come from him.
Interview with Arme
– Arme, can you introduce yourself to us?
-Of course! My name is Arme, I’m 10 years old, and I’m obsessed with communicating with all living beings. And I’m actually succeeding! Besides humans, I want to talk to mushrooms, stones, insects, microbes in the air, and even the stars in space. If a rock, just like me, wants to talk, I should be able to respond in a way it understands.
Talking to the stars in space might take some time. But I have to start somewhere, right?
– Wow, Arme! So, how do you plan to talk to these beings?
-Actually, we all do this all the time. For example, many people talk to animals. I often hear adults yelling at the ground when they stub their toes on something hard. Or when they lose something, they start talking to the lost item.
It’s kind of like that, but I do it using slightly different methods! To be able to talk to them, I need to be around them and spend time with them.
– How long have you been talking to different beings, and has any other being ever talked to you?
-Since I was born, actually! And every day, I talk to more and more beings.
I’m sure that plants can understand both my words and my songs, and I know that the wind talks to me. Since I was a child, my family and I have listened to the wind by the seaside, and they say they can hear it too. I talk to the wind by shouting or dancing. Sometimes, I just sit in my room and listen. It whispers to me to play and dance.
– What would you like to say to the other children at our school?
-I’m thinking of starting a club for talking to different beings. We could communicate with them together! But unless the adults take us to the forest, meeting these beings will be difficult… except for bacteria, of course—we can find them even in the bathroom!
– Thank you so much, Arme! Lastly, can you tell us your favorite thing these days?
-I got a magnifying glass for my birthday, and it’s amazing. I use it to watch snails slowly moving after the rain. When I look closely at the whiskers under their chins, it makes me laugh so much!
Once the newspaper was distributed to the students, even the children who didn’t like reading took a look at the pages. It was a brand-new experience for everyone. The number of students wanting to join the newspaper team suddenly increased. Ms. Alma decided that in order to give everyone a chance, she would rotate the team every few months.
Arme, Mojo, Kiki, Loco, Jona, and Keke continued working tirelessly on the newspaper. Kiki had already come up with an idea for the next issue’s cartoon. The weather had been very windy and stormy lately, so she planned to draw children flying their kites on a windy day. Suddenly, the wind would pick up, sending their kites soaring high into the sky, pulling a cloud over the school, and soaking everyone!
As for Arme and Mojo… Arme continued his studies and declared himself a biologist. He also found a new friend named Ferro, who was just as curious as he was about talking to animals and other beings! Mojo, on the other hand, pulled dusty encyclopedias off the shelves at home. Every day, he flipped through the pages, learning obscure facts and using them to play tricks on her siblings.
Editorial Note: Since the author deliberately constructed the characters in a gender-neutral way in the original text, we created a playful dynamic in the English translation by alternating between masculine and feminine pronouns. This approach aims to preserve the characters’ gender neutrality.
Esin Metin
