The First Page: Out of Gaza

THE FIRST PAGE

Out of Gaza.
A Tale of Love, Exile, and Friendship

by Katharina Galor

3 December 2025

The First Page presents the first page of books that are launched as part of the IAS Book Launch Programme. On 4 December 2025, Katharina Galor will present her book Out of Gaza, an account of the friendship between the author and Dima Mansour, a young Palestinian who is held in a Belgian detention centre for illegal immigration on the way to being with the man she loves in Belgium. Despite the different geopolitical contexts their lives are defined by, their friendship uncovers surprising parallels in their shared experiences of displacement and survival.

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From Amman and Gaza to Brussels

As usual, she didn’t answer my call right away, but she sent a text letting me know that she was busy in the kitchen, and she reached me after she and her fellow inmates had finished dinner. Her situation was grim, but I could sense over the line, me in Providence, Rhode Island, Dima in a lockup for illegal immigrants in Bruges, Belgium, her effort to control her voice and emotions. She was happy I called, she said, but there was nothing good to report. There was the usual daily routine, from time to time a change of guards or movement of convicts. Some of them had more difficult stories than others. A few seemed friendly but then turned depressed and unpleasant. Most were kind and sensitive, but tired of being locked up, not knowing what the future would bring.

Dima spoke in her usual tone, mixing kindness with humor but also hopelessness, telling me about one really lunatic woman who had come to the detention center that day. The woman was a mother of five, each child from a different father, none of whom appeared to be in the picture. A sex worker who, it turned out later, had good lawyers. She did nothing but scream and utter gibberish; once she rolled on the cold concrete floor holding on to some documents. The inmates were scared of her, and so were the guards, who seemed to know her from previous visits.

The eccentric woman was released from the center four hours after she arrived. But her screams, her suffering and misfortune, continued to resonate long after her awkward presence. Why was it, Dima had to wonder, that she, whose entire life had been shaped by virtue, modesty, and piety, remained under arrest in the detention center while a deranged person acting out was allowed to leave?

“I feel my entire life is upside down,” she told me. “When strange things would happen to me in Jordan or Gaza, I could somehow understand. I understood the context. I knew how to read and recognize the codes. Here, …

Out of Gaza. A Tale of Love, Exile, and Friendship was published by Potomac Books, an imprint of Nebraska Univerity Press, in September 2025.

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KATHARINA GALOR is Professor of Judaic Studies at Brown University. She works at the intersection of visual culture, heritage, and identity, focusing on Israel–Palestine. Trained in art history and archaeology, she teaches at Brown University, and her books include The Archaeology of Jerusalem, Finding Jerusalem, and Jewish Women: Between Conformity and Agency.

On 4 December 2025 Katharina Galor will launch her book Out of Gaza at the Institute of Advanced Studies. More information.

Lead Image: Photograph by Francis Shin via Unsplash.