ISSUE NINE | THE FLAVORS WE CARRY

Stories can be told without words, in the hands reaching for the plate on the lunch table, in the torn bread dipped in oil and zaatar, in the ripe fruit picked fresh off the tree, or in the blessings whispered before a meal begins.

Food is the way many of us first learn about care. We are taught that sharing a meal amongst family and friends is sacred. We also come to know that hunger is not always about sustenance, and that nourishment often arrives as a form of love, generosity, resistance, or even mourning.

Issue IX is a tribute to the multi-sensorial language of food. Food is tasted; but it is also smelled, touched, seen, and even heard. We tell stories of dishes and traditions that connect the past to the present, the land to the table, love to loss, and food to political action.

This issue is an invitation to reflect on what our inherited recipes and practices carry beyond ingredients and techniques. It is also a testament to how food sustains not just bodies, but histories and hopes.

We hope that this issue nourishes you in more ways that one.

Editor-in-Chief

Michelle Eid

Cover Art Designed by Aseel El Hariri

BEHIND THE COVER ART WITH RABAB CHAMSEDDINE, LEBANESE PHOTOGRAPHER

To me, this is what tenderness looks like. The most meaningful kind of bonding happens around a table with carob molasses, coffee, and fruits from one’s own garden.

In the South, my friends and I are always home by six, just in time for our usual afternoon under the willow tree. Setting the table without speaking — already knowing what an asrouniyeh should look like — speaks to the closeness we’ve inherited. We move easily through the kitchen because this love language was passed down to us through land and family.

In this photo, the platings and cups date back to the 1950s. They belonged to my grandmother, Teta Nemriyeh. The table holds the remains of many hands: sweets brought by past visitors, fruits from our garden and nearby villages, figs dried by my mother. There’s the carob molasses my father gulps down every morning, Ahwet Najjar whose foam will be shared equally, all bathed in the afternoon light — ready to sit around, ready to unwind in this space we call home.

I wanted to invite others into this feeling. To me, this image illustrates a language of love that goes back to our ancestry. To have kept this language alive, to still speak it among friends and lovers, to choose it over anything else — is deeply endearing.

Like manners passed down by our parents, this language too is inherited. Including heritage in the way we say I love you adds weight: it means this love has memory. It means I love you here and now, and also the way my people have always loved. It means borrowing from the goodness of one’s own land to create an alphabet of care.