Maintaining these boundaries

Maintaining these boundaries was not easy. Unlike in other books, books in which the participants are removed far from the process of writing, the protagonist's picture this time was painted without any poetic license. I knew the story must be published in every detail. All the dialogue is true. They also filmed movies based on his book.

Over the last year I paid many visits to Shoshanna's Estate and talked with Meir. From the balcony of the house I looked out over the mountains and valleys and appreciated the immensity and beauty of the open spaces. Though hidden then, later as I listened to the stories of Meir, their romance seized me as I sat in my room and began to tell the tale. I kept asking myself where it comes from - this impulse to break boundaries and conventions, walk little-trod paths, climb to the mountain eyries, to be the first and last visitor to those precious places no one sees.

Not all actions

Not all actions, while the diaries were being written, were recorded. If unmentioned, the action was unrecorded. But no recorded action was omitted. The diaries join Meir's story on Rose Manor - the story of rehabilitation after injury in a harsh action against the police. This occurred near the edge of Mount Hebron at the time of the Sinai Campaign. Read the discourse presented in the book with a grain of salt, though it is real. In the telling of one story, another unfolded. I asked Meir to come to me and tell me the story of my sister Shoshanna, murdered by Bedouins in the Judean desert at the end of 1954. Shoshanna's story led to Meir's story. Our conversations lasted over a year and were recorded on tape.

Foreword

Dear reader,

Here you are presented with a unique book. If in buying this book you seek a literary standard, remember that no literature is of use but that which claims the author's whole strength. This is a document of my life - this is a document of an era. General events and personal doubts, successes and failures, bad and good fit into the picture - described unembellished and without an attempt to excuse anything. The diary entries, begun by a young boy at Kibbutz Ein-Harod and continued by the same man as an IDF soldier, are submitted to the reader in their full content and original style. No corrections have been made from foreign tongues - to maintain the authenticity of the original ones. Over the years, various papers published some of the entries, but they were often distorted. There is thus no comparison between the passages as they appeared in the press and the events narrated in the diaries as they occurred.