. . . Efrat continued walking, sometimes bending gracefully and passing through acacia trees – the dry leaves crackling beneath her sandals, and sometimes walking on the sand around the trees in her way. She could hear Yoram's and Yair's deep voices behind her as they followed more slowly.
Hearing heavy panting, Efrat stopped and turned around to see Beauty dashing up towards her.
"Oh Beauty, you darling!" Efrat exclaimed. She smiled sadly. "You don't have to worry about Disengagement, do you. Lucky you," she crooned and pet Beauty. Efrat sighed, "it’s hard to be human, harder still to be a Jew, and even harder to be a Jew in Gush Katif in the month of Sivan 5765 (June 2005)."
Efrat sank down onto the still warm clean sand and waited for her father and brother to catch up. Beauty rested beside her, her red tongue hanging out.
The sky was pink towards the sea, light blue above Efrat's head and dark in the direction of Arab K'han Yunis. Efrat picked up a handful of sand and stared at it as she let the grains fall between her fingers and stream to the ground; the sand was composed of gold, light brown and dark brown grains as well as tiny white sea-shell fragments.
"Sand," she mused to herself. "Tiny grains of sand. So light and so small, any breeze can uproot them and cause them to fly distances away." She paused. "Yet these same grains prevent a mighty sea from flooding the country." She gazed at the darkening sky over K'han Yunis. "We too are grains of sand; small and weak – the government can move us, yet we prevent the Arabs from flooding the country with mortars and kassam rockets. When we are out of here and the army is out too, the Arabs will bring explosives in from Egypt without anyone to hinder them. From our Northern communities they'll be able to hit the city of Ashkelon and eventually Ashdod too." She picked up another handful of sand. "We are sand," she murmured, "no more and no less. Just sand."