Classic Short Fiction: ‘A Criminal Against His Will’

July 16, 2026

Ali Al-Douagi (1909–1949) was a pioneering Tunisian writer, poet, journalist, playwright, caricaturist, and leading figure of modern Tunisian humorous literature.

A Criminal Against His Will

By Ali Al-Douagi

Translated by Amr M. El-Zawawy

It was five o’clock in the morning. The station, faintly illuminated by dim lamps, lay beneath a murky canopy of locomotive smoke. Qasim stood beside the steps of one of the coaches, gazing at the station clock. He murmured to himself:

“There is still a whole hour before the train departs. How endless these final hours are!”

Finally, he took a seat at the rear of the carriage, placed his wicker basket between his knees, and began rolling a cigarette with trembling hands. As his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness inside the coach, he noticed sitting opposite him a stout old man wrapped in a spotless white burnous, a turban wound around his head. The old man sat as motionless as a wax effigy, unmoved by the bustle of the passengers. Qasim greeted him:

“Good morning, father.”

The old man returned neither an equal greeting nor one better. Qasim thought, An ill-mannered old fellow. Still, I’m bound to share his company so long as we’re the only two passengers in this carriage.

Qasim struck a match to light his cigarette. In its brief glow, he caught sight of the old man’s face. It was a truly gentle face, one that inspired confidence: a dignified mien beneath a white beard, with bright, intelligent eyes. The old man, in turn, looked at Qasim and smiled.

Qasim was about thirty years old: tall, tanned, and strikingly handsome despite the melancholy that clouded his features and the facial hair that had gone unshaven for days. He wore an old blue suit, frayed at the edges and patched so often that it resembled a geographical map covered in many colors.

The old man’s smile encouraged Qasim to reopen the conversation—not merely to shorten the journey or pass the time, but because he desperately needed to unburden a worry he had suppressed for years. His words poured forth all at once, without introduction, as a porter flings down his load before dusting off his shoulders.

“Oh, venerable father! No one who knows life has not been tried by it. How cruel it is… how bitter its taste! I have borne burdens beneath which mountains themselves would stagger. I have been wronged and beset by calamities that haunted me throughout my life until they left me gnawing at my own heart and conscience, like a fox that chews through its trapped leg to escape with the rest of its body. My feet slipped into the abyss of crime, though I was innocent. Ah…”

He spoke in a quavering voice, with the hesitant tone of one long accustomed to silence. His cigarette trembled between his lips as he continued:

“Don’t deny it when I tell you that I am both a criminal and innocent. I am that strange mixture. Life has treated me harshly—God forgive me for saying so—for everything has stood against me since my mother first carried me in her womb. My father died before I ever saw the light of day, and my mother died while I was still a child.

“When I was six years old, my foolish, miserly older brother decided to remove me from our hometown of Téla so that he might keep the inheritance for himself. Under the pretext of sending me to seek an education, he dispatched me to the capital to live with one of our cousins—as though there were no school in Téla fit to educate a boy of six! Thus began the long chain of my misfortunes.

“My cousin, Omar al-Wathari, was a kind and wealthy man. I remember him only with gratitude. He accepted me among his own children as one of them, and he watched over my upbringing and education with all the tenderness of a loving father. Ah, my dear father! How wretched I became! Despite all my cousin’s affection, I always felt that another kind of tenderness was missing. A void remained in my heart, one that I longed to fill.

“I can see that you’re listening, yet deep down perhaps you’re mocking a young man who complains about life despite having lived so few years. But in those few years, I have suffered beyond measure. I cry out before you now—and before the whole world, before justice itself—that I have been wronged. I did nothing to deserve all I have endured. I was a prisoner, dragging iron chains, and it was only yesterday that I regained my freedom.

“Do you know, father, why I was imprisoned? Because I defended the honor of a girl I loved.

“I see you neither answer nor stir. You’re right. I have begun my story with its ending. Now I shall tell it to you from the beginning, step by step.”

“In my cousin Omar’s household, I was honored and cherished, as though I were living among my own parents and siblings. Among Omar’s daughters was a beautiful and intelligent girl my own age. I became attached to her, and she to me, while we were still children. Her affection and tenderness eased the bitterness of my orphanhood and filled the emptiness in my heart.

“For many long years, we loved one another with a pure and innocent love, untouched by any stain, and were separated only during school hours. Yes, father, this miserable fellow you see before you was once a gifted pupil at a secondary school. She too attended classes in embroidery and decorative arts at the girls’ lycée. I walked her to school each morning and escorted her home every afternoon.

“On our way, we passed a spice merchant’s shop. Never once did the girl pass by without the owner accosting her with the coarse flirtations for which the vulgar are notorious. I swallowed my anger and jealousy and passed his shop as though I were deaf. That only emboldened the shameless spice merchant to grow ever more insolent, until at last the cup of my endurance ran over.

“On the day it overflowed, before I knew it, I had entered his shop, and the knife he used in his trade was in my right hand. The spice merchant cried out and opened a cupboard to fetch a weapon. My knife was quicker, grazing his arm before he could draw his.

“He screamed, and the rabble on the street rushed over and surrounded us. I was like a man in the grip of a feverish delirium. I came to my senses only when I found myself standing before the court.

“The villain claimed that I had planned to murder him in order to seize the money from his cashbox. He was wealthy; I was poor.

“The constable who arrested us testified that he had seen the knife flashing in my hand and the murderous intent flashing in my eyes. He saw the cupboard standing open and the open wound in the spice merchant’s arm.

“As for me, dear father, I was like a man stunned senseless. I regained consciousness but could say nothing. My tongue remained stuck until I found myself confined to a narrow prison cell. I wept, sobbed, and cried out to my fellow prisoners: ‘I am innocent!’

“They mocked me.

“Every piece of evidence stood against me. I was sentenced to five years of hard labor and sent to work at Sawaf. I—yes, I—had left school only to enter prison!

“Was it my fault that I had been created to love that girl?

“Was it my fault that my blood could not bear the spice merchant’s vulgar advances?

“Was it my fault that his knife was so sharp that it entered human flesh as easily as it sliced through soap and cheese?

“I completed my five years among criminals. From them, I heard tales beyond counting.

“Was it my fault that prison gates close only upon criminals?

“I did not return to my cousin’s house. I knew he could never receive a man accused of attempted murder and theft as he had once welcomed the diligent student I used to be.

“I learned that the girl had been married to that insolent… wealthy… spice merchant. The very man who, unlike me, had never entered a prison. That was the reward she gave me…

“There remained only a short distance between me and the abyss that separated the worlds of virtue and crime.

“After being told that wine helps one forget, I took to drink.

“Was it my fault that wine serves only to breed idleness?

“I found myself back in prison once again, laboring in the fields of Jaffar and at the salt works of La Goulette, once more exposed to the corrupting influences of criminal society.”

At that moment, the locomotive released a great hiss of steam across the station, announcing its imminent departure. The golden rays of the rising sun scattered the somber blue of dawn.

The old man had not stirred throughout the vagabond’s tale, nor even at the deafening blast of the engine.

The vagabond’s eyes widened with suspicion. He rose, grasped the old man’s shoulder, and asked:

“Father!… Father!… Have you heard my story?”

The old man answered:

“Fa… fa… ba… ba… fa…”

Qasim collapsed back onto his seat, closed his eyes, and said:

“Ah—even this! I have been pouring out my misery to a deaf-mute!”

And the wheels of the train began to turn.

Ali Al-Douagi (1909–1949) was a pioneering Tunisian writer, poet, journalist, playwright, caricaturist, and leading figure of modern Tunisian humorous literature. Born in Tunis into a modest bourgeois family, he lost his father at an early age and left formal education at twelve. Through extensive self-education and engagement with literary circles, he developed into one of Tunisia’s most influential literary figures. As a member of the literary group Taht Essour (“Under the Wall”), he contributed to the emergence of a modern Tunisian cultural identity and used satire to criticize colonialism, social injustice, and hypocrisy. In 1936, he founded the satirical newspaper Al-Surur. Douagi wrote short stories, plays, radio dramas, songs, poems, and caricatures, often portraying the lives of ordinary and marginalized people. His works frequently explored encounters between Eastern and Western cultures, advocating coexistence and mutual understanding. Although he died of tuberculosis at the age of forty, his literary legacy endured through collections such as Sahirt Minhu al-Layali (Sleepless Nights Overtook Him). Today, he is widely regarded as a foundational figure in modern Tunisian and Arabic literature.

Amr El-Zawawy is Professor of Linguistics and Translation, Faculty of Education, Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt. He has also practiced written and simultaneous translation for more than 20 years now. He contributed important articles to different international scholarly journals, including but not limited to Babel (John Benjamins), Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, California Linguistic Notes and Advances in Language and Literary Studies. He published a number of books and translations, including Studies in Contrastive Linguistics and Stylistics (Novika, USA), Exploring the Cognitive Processes of Simultaneous Interpreting (Lexington Books, USA), Seminal Studies in Linguistics and Translation (Cambridge Scholars, UK), Selections from Arabic Poetry (Kindle, Amazon), and English-Arabic Dictionary of Rare and Difficult Words (Lincom).

Other stories in the Classic Short Fiction series, curated by Amr El-Zawawy:

Ali Al-Douagi’s “My Neighbor”

Fouad Elshayeb’s “East Is East (Inspired by Paris)”

Fouad Elshayeb’s “The Funeral of the Machine”

Ameen Rihani’s ‘The Crown of Disgrace’

Mohammed Hussein Heikal’s ‘The Atonement of Love’

Mohammed Hussein Heikal’s ‘The Second Family’

Ibrahim Abdelkader Al-Mazni’s ‘On New Year’s Eve’

Mahmoud Saif al-Din al-Irani‘s ‘The Last Bullet’