There are places that live in the imagination long before one ever sets foot in them. Carthage was one of those places for me. The ancient Theatre of Carthage — perched on a hillside overlooking the Mediterranean, built into the ruins of one of the most consequential civilisations in human history — had been on my radar for years. Not as a venue to tick off a list, but as a place I felt, somehow, I was always meant to stand in (or in my case ‘sit’ in). When the invitation finally came, I said yes without hesitation.

What I did not anticipate was that the universe, in its infinite and occasionally dramatic wisdom, would spend the twenty-four hours before my departure doing everything in its power to make me reconsider.

Let me tell you about that day. Within a single twenty-four hour window — I want you to understand, a single day — the following occurred: one of my beloved pets was found with a head injury and bleeding (he is, thank God, fully recovered); our house manager was admitted to hospital and spent time in intensive care (she too, thank God, is now well); my brother required emergency surgery for appendicitis; and my cousin, who had been given only a few weeks to live, chose that precise day to pass. May God have mercy on her soul.

I sat in the middle of all of this and thought: surely this is a sign. Surely the universe is sending me a message that is not particularly subtle.

And yet, after reflection — and after conversations with people I trust deeply, spiritually and otherwise — the picture became clearer. The most honest and most ancient explanation for such a convergence is what in Arabic is called al-‘ayn: the evil eye. I know this concept makes some people uncomfortable, and I know it is dismissed in certain quarters as superstition. The evil eye is acknowledged across virtually every wisdom tradition in the world — from the Islamic tradition, to the Jewish, to the Greek, to the Persian, to the Turkish, to countless others. It is not a folk tale. It is a recognition that human attention and human envy carry a real energetic weight, and that this weight can land.

I speak from experience. And my experience tells me it is entirely, 100% real.

The primary protection — and this is something my tradition holds with great seriousness — is gratitude and constant attribution to the Creator. The phrase masha Allah, God has willed it, is not merely a social nicety when spoken after praise or good fortune. It is a shield. It redirects the energy of admiration back to its proper source, and in doing so, neutralises what might otherwise accumulate. I try never to forget this.

But I am curious: what do you think? Do you believe in the evil eye? Have you experienced it? I would genuinely love to know your thoughts — please do share them in the Majlis.

We travelled anyway. 

Before I tell you about the concert, let me tell you a little about where we were.

Tunis is one of the great spiritual and intellectual capitals of the Islamic world — home to the Zitouna Mosque and its ancient university, Al-Zaytuna, founded in 737 CE, which for over a millennium served as one of the foremost centres of Islamic scholarship, philosophy, and jurisprudence in the world. Long before the great European universities drew their first students, scholars were gathering beneath its colonnades to debate theology, mathematics, astronomy, and the nature of the divine. The great Ibn Khaldun himself — historian, philosopher, and one of the founding minds of what we would today call sociology — was formed in this intellectual tradition. Tunis, in other words, is not simply old. It is wise.

And then there is its Andalusian soul. When the luminous civilisation of Islamic Spain drew toward its close, waves of scholars, poets, musicians, and artisans made their way across the sea and found in Tunis a city willing to receive them. They came carrying everything they had built — their music, their architectural sensibility, their poetic traditions, their refined urban culture — and Tunis absorbed it all with extraordinary grace. The Andalusian musical tradition is still performed here today in forms traceable directly to the courts of Cordoba and Granada. Walk through the old medina and you are walking through a city that became, quietly and without fanfare, the custodian of one of history's most beautiful civilisations. It preserved what others lost.

To stand in the Theatre of Carthage — ancient stone beneath an open sky, the sea visible in the distance — is to stand inside a confluence of worlds and centuries, each one having left something worth keeping. This is the kind of place that makes a musician take a very deep breath before stepping on stage.

We arrived, and then the practical realities of touring reasserted themselves with their usual lack of romance. The flight was long. My hotel, I quickly discovered, was situated in what I can only describe as a location acoustically incompatible with human sleep. I changed it. This is not a complaint — it is simply the life. One learns, after some years, to carry one’s equilibrium from room to room rather than expecting it to be waiting on arrival.

Rehearsals were what rehearsals always are: gruelling, demanding, occasionally humbling, and entirely necessary. The Fons Sophiae Collective, I have said this before and I will say it again, are not ordinary musicians. What they are asked to bring — the concentration, the discipline, the capacity to hold an enormous amount of musical and emotional material at once, while also remaining present, flexible, and alive in performance — is genuinely extraordinary. Most professional musicians would find it very difficult to withstand the pressure our concerts require. This ensemble does not merely withstand it. They rise through it.

By performance night, everyone was ready. They always are.

And then the concert happened. And I will be honest with you: the response was unlike almost anything I have experienced before. The audience — a Tunisian audience, in an open-air ancient theatre, on a warm Mediterranean night — gave something back that I was not expecting. The energy, the attention, the emotional generosity of that crowd moved me in ways that are genuinely difficult to articulate. It stands, without any exaggeration, among the most profound performance experiences of my life.

Some nights you perform. Other nights, something performs through you, and the audience is not watching — they are participating in something they may not have words for either. Carthage was one of those nights.

But the moment I keep returning to, the one that sits warmest in the memory, is the Golden Circle gathering. Meeting Mirvana, Khawla, and Aymane was — and I mean this in the truest possible sense — completely seamless. As though we had known each other for a long time and were simply continuing a conversation that had briefly been interrupted. Thank you so much for your beautiful gifts. As I said to you then, and as I want to say again here: you yourselves are the gift. The exchange we had — brief as it was, touching on music, art, spirituality — was meaningful in a way that far outweighed its duration.

It has, in fact, renewed something in me. A vision I carry, and have carried for some time: the idea of a physical gathering space — a retreat, of sorts — where members of this community can come together once a year, or more, to connect, to heal, to grow. Immersed in music, in beauty, in wisdom and virtue. A place without the distractions that ordinarily pull us from what matters. I do not know yet what form this will take, or when. But I know it is something I want to build, and I know that nights like Carthage remind me why.

What do you think? Is this something that interests you? I would genuinely love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Tunisia was, in the end, everything I hoped it would be — and then a little more. The universe, it seems, was not warning me away from it. Perhaps it was simply ensuring I arrived with the right kind of attention.

I hope we meet again soon. And I hope, wherever you are as you read this, you are well, protected, and surrounded by love and goodness.

With so much love,

Sami 💛