But there is no such thing as objective history. Every historian brings a mass of very slanted assumptions to filter what seem to be facts. Every day the best newspaper correspondents miss the real motives of the people they describe. And even when we have known a person intimately for many years we can misunderstand the heart longings and drives that move them. So writing three thousand years after the events, and on the basis of very terse documents, I know I am caricaturing the main characters.
Caricatures can be deliberately vicious.
But I would like this story to offer a model for Arabs and Jews, and even Christians, to look at where they have come from in creative ways. I have set out the story from the very personal point of view of Abraham's legal heir, Ishmael. And every twist and turn of events is documented from the chapters and verses of Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew Bible. Translations are from the New Revised Standard Version, 1989. Our story is written without footnotes, except to suggest some later Geographical locations.