On Wednesday morning, a rumor started floating around NYU Abu Dhabi that the rainstorms in the city might force the school to close on Thursday. I scribbled a poem titled desert rainstorms/forest thunderstorms and proceeded to announce on Facebook that if the school did indeed shut down, I’d make pakoray for the entire student body. Lo and behold, the school did close on Thursday, and I couldn’t leave my room without every other person inquiring about the pakoray.

My mother sent me a recipe via WhatsApp, but I freaked out at the prospect of chopping a dozen Spanish red onions. So I ended up buying a carton of pakoray from Mina Port and invited the entire school for Pakora Fest 2016, as it came to be known. For three hours, we sat around a box of spicy pakoray and chilli sauce and talked about traditions, seasons, Pashtuns in Afghanistan, martial law in Pakistan, Russians’ tolerance to spice, sex education and everything in between.

Food is more than a culmination of vegetables, meat and spices, prepared in a specific order. It is stories and traditions that pass from one generation to the next, stories that transcend borders and unite communities around the world. It is how we remember our families and kitchens, our cities and nations. Pakoray, for me, are reminiscent of the monsoons drenching Pakistan in 48-degree Celsius summers, of limo pani and evenings in Ramadan.

But the aim of this special issue of The Gazelle is not merely to indulge in nostalgia. Food is one of the fundamental channels through which we interact with this dust-speckled city that we now call home — conversations about the best falafel in town are often the first step to developing a connection with Abu Dhabi. Food, how we call it and how we go about eating it, can make us as many friends as it can enemies.

We hope to explore how food relates to families and places, and what happens when our relationships to them change. We want to discuss who claims which foods and in what ways — how flat bread becomes parathas in Abbotabad, shawarmas in Abu Dhabi and tacos in Mexico City. We hope to shed light on issues such as body image on campus and choices like veganism and halal eating.

This March, The Gazelle aims to delve deeper into these relationships, and hopes to spark conversations that go beyond the plate, beyond the pages of a recipe book and most definitely, beyond the confines of our publication.

Yours, Khadeeja