Asel and Cioglu

This is a story of how the Earth and its inhabitants were made. There used to be a time when there was no Earth. Where the Earth sits today, there used to be space. And next to this space were two planets called Mars and Venus, which were ruled by Asel and Cioglu, respectively.

The planets of Mars and Venus were friends. Often times Asel was invited to Venus, and Cioglu was invited to Mars. Asel and Cioglu each experienced the drastically polar temperatures of the planet they visited. Mars was too cold, never getting enough warmth from the sun like Venus; Venus was too hot, never getting enough chill breezes from the rest of outer space like Mars. The two praised each other for their planets’ temperatures at the end of their visits and carried on with their lives.

One day, Asel’s daughter Irem came home with calculus and physics homework. Asel looked at her worksheets and books and thought to himself, “I wonder if these subjects are useful.” Upon thinking to himself, he heard his daughter sneeze due to a cold she has had for days. Poor Irem, her running nose and watery eyes irritated with redness from so much wiping. “It’s too cold for her here. I should send her to Venus, but I don’t want to bother Cioglu for another visit.”

Every night, Asel looked over those calculus and physics problems Irem brought home, deciding if he can do anything with them in order to create a comfortable temperature for him and his family to live in. As he pondered and worked on problems, he stared out his window at Venus, day-dreaming about its temperature. Suddenly, as if it had not occurred to him before, he noticed the space separating his planet Mars from Venus. He scribbled down the mean of Mars and Venus’ temperatures on scrap paper and concluded that the space between Mars and Venus was perfect!

The next morning after his brilliant discovery, Asel threw rocks from Mars into the space he found the night before. He did this every day until there was a small ball of rock separating Mars and Venus.

Cioglu called out to Asel, “Hey! What are you doing, friend?”

“I’m building a new planet for my family to live on! The temperature is going to be perfect! Not too hot and not too cold!”

“Can I live there too?”

Asel did not hear the question.  He was too excited chucking rocks. Offended, Cioglu started chucking her own Venus rocks into the abyss. Within months, Asel and Cioglu had created two small planets in the once empty space. Asel and Irem started to pack and were ready to move in.

Since Cioglu started her planet a few days after Asel’s, she was not satisfied that hers was smaller. “One more rock,” she thought, and chose a boulder to throw. That boulder was too much. It crashed into Cioglu’s little planet and collided into Asel’s little planet. “Uh oh…” She quickly rushed over to the new planet to personally apologize to Asel, who had arrived hours before.

Asel and Cioglu confronted each other and accepted each other’s apologies after acknowledging the misunderstandings. Together— with Irem— they examined the damage caused from the colliding planets and found that large craters and mountains were formed.

Soon after what they had found, it started to heavily rain. The water slid down the mountains into what would be rivers and filled the craters, creating oceans and 75% of the planet. After the rain, Irem noticed plants growing and spreading across the land unoccupied by blue water. Meanwhile, Asel and Cioglu greeted newcomers and settlers from other planets, curious about “The Blue Planet,” who called themselves fish, birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles.

Despite the many foreign inhabitants on the newly born planet, as friendly as they were, Irem still felt alone. Sympathetic of Irem’s loneliness, Asel and Cioglu agreed to make hundreds of brothers and sisters for her.

The weather was excellent, composed of warmth from Venus and coolness from Mars. The green plants with rivers and mountains did justice on the new planet’s beauty. With such perfection, the humans and animals lived harmoniously. This was a story of how the Earth and its inhabitants were made.