from Ibrahim Sallo

Great Dr Sadeeq. Really I like it.

from Ibrahim Mumayiz

Dear Sid,




Most welcome to WATA!!! You should have been an active, and honoured member at least a year ago. I'm so pleased you're with us. Lets do something in WATA together. What say thou? How about "SHAKESPEARE! THE IDEAL RENAISSANCE MAN" we could hold forth, alternately, you and I on how the Renaissance was Shakespeare, and Shakespeare was the Renaissance! A Real lively duette!!



Ib

Exchange with JoAnne Akalaitis

On Dec 31, 2007, at 11:06 PM, siddeek tawfeek wrote:

Dear JoAnne
Wishing you a
VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR
I remain
Sincerely
Siddeek


From joanne akalaitis to siddeek tawfeek

thank you and same to you. having fun with beckett now.

Sad champion Beckett

To you, dear Sam, sad champion of the drab




Today, April 13th, Samuel Beckett's 102nd birthday, and who knows, maybe like TS Eliot's Becket, Beckett is now looking down at us, we, to use Hamlet's phrase, "fools of nature

tsadeek

In her friendly, intimate, private and homely personal domestic book on SB, titled How It Was, Ann Atik doesn't find in the English language an adjective adequate enough to describe SB's nicety, so she resorts to borrow from the Hebrew language the word "tsadeek" which she explains means the rightueous, the veracious. "Verily, verily I tell ye" says The New Testament, which quotation Dostoyvsky used as epigraph for his The Brothers Karamazov. Indeed, my name Siddeek means the same in Arabic as tsadeek in Hebrew. On the other hand, after reading Ann Atik's "tsadeek" at the Beckett International Foundation in the University of Reading Library, I rushed to the secretary Verity Andrews and told her that her name, Verity and mine, Siddeek have the same meaning

With Ruby Cohn

Following year, July 2005, I visited Ruby Cohn at her London studio. We left the studio as the maid was tidying up the place, and we went to a restaurant where we had lunch. While walking, I told her we looked like "Violet and Sebastian, Sebastian and Violet", as Violet Venable, in Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer, describes how stylish and elegant she and her son Sebastian appeared in posh restaurants


Ruby was suffering from hard hearing, and as if she had a hunch that she was saying good-bye to intellectual life, she told me, after returning to her studio from the Italian restaurant, to help myself to any of the books available there. I choose one volume only and that was Deirdre Bair's SB Biography. At that time, there was a staging of Miller's Deat of a Salesman at the Lyric Theatre-Shaftesbury, London and I thought of going together, but she told me she had seen it, didn't like it and advised me against going to see it. She advised me to go and see a Beckett double bill in a fringe theatre which I couldn't locate, so I went to see Salesman which proved Ruby was right. Ruby told me a lot of things about her Beckettian life, and I asked her about the first French Godot in Paris directed by Roger Blin in 1953, she told me that the first Godot she saw was the 1956 one in London, and she went to see it with her then-husband. She also told me that Suzanne, Mrs Beckett, had two entrances to the Beckett residence, one for his visitors who included all the English-language speaking ones, and another entrance for her visitors who were all French-language speaking ones. Therefore, Ruby concluded, she never met Suzanne

At the Knowlsons'

After meeting Ruby Cohn in London, I went to meet James Knowlson in Reading. He was expecting me at the Beckett International Foundation. And at the BIF I was, reading a book on Beckett, and it was lunch time when everybody except me was out for lunch. I heard a knock on the door, and opening it, I saw a man and a woman standing there. Telling by my Arabian features that I was the Arab of Beckettia, they both said, "You must be Mr Tawfeek", saying "Yes", I added, "You must be Professor and Mrs Knowlson", and they said "Yes". We went to the Senior Common Room for lunch. Ruby had told me that Jim was a non-stop talker and how one day Beckett, being the shy man he was, signaled to her to make Knowlson cease. Indeed, Jim seemed not to have learned the lesson, and so he was doing all the talking--of course, all valuable stuff about Beckett--while Liz and I were all ears and chewing our chicken casserole. Jim concluded that I go visit them at home for a tea afternoon which I did. In the garden, over high tea, we exchanged remarks about Beckett and Liz said how one day Sam kissed her, and turning to Jim, she said, "Sam kissed me, Jim, you do remember", and Jim, in mixed jealousy and pride nodded "Yes". I spent a wonderful time with the Knowlsons, and when alighting from his car he said to me, "Call me Jim"