The silent mountain pass suddenly trembled. A huge tour bus shook everything around it. A child inside, affected by the echo of the narrow road, opened the window. While listening to the sounds, the pencil he was holding slipped from his hand and fell onto the road.
The pencil rolled to the edge of the narrow pass, waiting there until the moment Yunus would find it. Yunus, unaware that this pencil would change his life, was passing by. Perhaps if it hadn’t been a beautiful purple pencil, he wouldn’t have even noticed it. When he saw the pencil, he saw the world as well. Everything around him was dull, dim. He picked it up and thought, “What could I do with this?”
Maybe others couldn’t draw with just one pencil, but for Yunus, that single pencil was every pencil. He began drawing shapes on the nearby rocks.
There was no color other than purple — but Yunus had an idea. For places where he needed other colors, he simply wrote their names: “Red,” “Green,” “Blue.” That made him even happier. He had created color where there was none, possibility where there was none. All day long he drew, and he created colors. The villagers passing by didn’t always notice his drawings, but they paused to admire his love and joy.
An old man approached and said, “What you are doing has a name: art.”
Yunus didn’t know what art was, but if what he was doing resembled it, then he knew he would love art. He couldn’t define what he was doing — it was simply doing one’s best. He worked carefully, and it made him deeply happy.
Curious, Yunus asked, “What is art?”
The old man smiled. “No one knows for sure — it can be anything. Painting, sculpture, song… even building a house can be art.”
This opened new doors in Yunus’s mind. So, this thing he did could exist everywhere, in everything. “What is a sculpture?” he asked.
“Sculpture,” said the old man, “is making what you draw into something you can touch.”
Yunus loved that idea.
When the old man left, Yunus started making shapes out of branches, stones, and grass. His first figure was a human made of dry sticks. For days he experimented with whatever he could find. He asked everyone, “How can I make art?”
The villagers told him he needed clay — and for clay, he needed rain. So Yunus waited for days. When the rain finally came, he began shaping human figures from the wet earth. Each sculpture was followed by another. His joy grew, and with it, his desire. He wanted to make more.
Wall paintings were not enough for Yunus anymore, nor were sculptures. He wanted more art. What was beyond painting and sculpture? The villagers wanted his passion to serve a useful purpose, so they suggested he build a village house. They taught him how to make adobe bricks — and to wait patiently for them to dry. Yunus learned patience for the sake of his love.
He began building walls, slowly raising the frame of a home. He was doing what he loved and helping others at the same time. Then he decided to share that joy. He asked everyone in the village to make one brick and bring it. The village house would truly belong to the whole village.
And they did. Brick by brick, the house took shape — a home built by everyone’s hands. When it was finished, they all felt a part of it. It wasn’t just architecture; it was a symbol of unity. They called it “Our House.” It belonged not to one family, but to all families — and truly, it was ours.
Yunus’s story spread to other villages and towns. People came to visit, bringing a brick with them as a gift. The villagers used those bricks to build more houses — homes for humanity itself.
Then people began bringing pencils too — purple, blue, green, red, even colors Yunus had never seen before: pastel blue, metallic gold, neon green… There were so many pencils and people that the villagers stopped working and began welcoming them. With these pencils and visitors, they built new homes.
The village became famous for its colorful buildings and its legendary love.
No child born there ever lacked a pencil again. Everyone had as many as they wished. The village needed nothing anymore — but the world needed them. People came to bring bricks and pencils, hoping to learn something. Yet Yunus and the villagers never taught anything.
They simply did what they could — and called it love.
