I started the day with a vivid reminder of how fear is still very much a part of life here. In the town of Qued, a teacher named AmliI (who I stayed the night with) showed me some documents that proclaimed him to be a "Registered Citizen of the World Government of World Citizens." The documents had been issued in Washington, D.C., and also included an official (but equally worthless) passport and a "Universal Declaration of Human Rights."

Amlil had pulled the items out from deep in a bureau, where he had hidden them, and he showed them as if they were made of gold. In a land where so many have told me how much they want to get out, those documents and "passport" were probably the closest he'd ever get to having a real passport. And I didn't have the heart to not act impressed.

"If the government knew I had these, I'd be in big trouble and even go to jail," he said as he hid them back under his clothes in the bureau drawer.

It struck me as sad that a man could place so much hope--and fear--in something as harmless as papers describing the right of a man to be free. But then that is how it usually is under a dictatorial monarchy like that in Morocco.

Next came a danger of the kind I'd never expected in this day and age. I no sooner entered the large and slum-like town of Taza around noon than I suddenly found myself in the path of a runaway horse team pulling an unoccupied wagon madly down the main street. As I stood petrified an old, nearly-blind man and his donkey emerged from an alley between me and the horses, and it was the old man, not me, that was bowled down by the horses and wagon. With the horses' legs flailing and becoming entwined, there was the sickening sounds of raw flesh plowing into rough gravel, as the entire chaotic mass tumbled crazily but inches from me.

Quickly I tended to the severly injured man, while others untwisted the donkey's legs and kept any would-be thieves away from the backpack I'd flung to the side of the road. Incredibly, no one thought to unhitch the runaway horses from the upended wagon. Soon the terrified horses were back on their feet and racing off to cause yet more destruction--this time in a nearby bus terminal packed with commuters.

So typical of life here, many knew how to ease the poor donkey's pain, but yet no one seemed to know the first thing about how to treat the unconcious man's gaping flesh wounds. I shall be forever grateful for the first-aid training I'd received while working on the drilling rigs in Wyoming.

But wait. Death was not to leave me alone quite yet. Towards dusk a pack of three sickly wild dogs rushed at me from the sand dunes beside the empty road. As I screamed, they circled and rushed at me again and again, their jaws snapping and their minds evidently delirious from hunger, sun, and my own panic.

For at least five minutes I slashed at the dogs with my hunting knife and a walking stick, while I screamed for someone--anyone!--to come to my rescue. Were it not for a passing truck filled with soldiers, I might not have held out. Three shots from an officer's pistol, and the dogs quickly scattered.

The most striking memory I have of that encounter with the dogs is not of the dogs or of the pistol shots, but of three farm women who came out of a nearby adobe house and laughed deliriously while I fought off the dogs. I guess that the women thought the sight of me screaming at the dogs looked quite strange. But then what do they ever see in such an isolated area each day but sand, rocks, and sheep?

Then came night and the worst--and the best--yet. A strong feezing wind from the west forced me to keep walking long into the dark vastness. There was no way I could have erected my tent in the gale-force winds, and there was nothing larger than boulders to hide behind. Anyhow, my hands were so stiff I doubt I could have unpacked my backpack.

On and on I trudged, not a sign of lilfe anywhere--not even a blade of grass. All at once a darkly-robed and hooded figure came running at me from seemingly nowhere. Horrible memories of Tangiers raced through my mind, and I waited for a knife to come out from beneath the stranger's robe. Instead, a handshake materialized. It was a young road construction worker who had see me earlier out on the desert. He immediately led me to the camp he shared with several other workers. Their dwellings were nothing more than plywood-and-tin shacks, with only cots and kerosene lamps for furnishings. However, to my shivering body those shacks were mansions. Although unheated, the shacks provided me with much-needed relief from the continuous winds.

With the help of an older man who spoke some Spanish, we were able to communicate mostly about jobs and wages in America. All the time we drank glass after glass of mint tea--"Moroccan whiskey." (In most Moslem societys, real whisky is forbidden.)

Towards midnight I feel asleep under what seemed a ton of blankets. My stomach was full of sardines and bread soaked in olive oil (two Moroccan staples).

Right before I fell asleep, I realized that, once again, it had been a typically tiring day of living on the edge of death in what was an exceptionally fascinating country.

Steven