Mohamed Amin

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 20:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety two, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a news cameraman. Many of the most dramatic pictures of recent years have been brought to our television screens through his work. It was he who alerted the world to the plight of the starving in Ethiopia in nineteen eighty four. George Bush said he'd saved millions of lives.

Presenter0:46

A year ago he was again filming in Ethiopia when an explosion killed his sound man and shattered his left arm.

Presenter0:53

The doctors told him he would never work again. But he travelled the world in search of the right artificial limb. He found it, and he's been back at work, as usual, for several months now. He is Mohammed Ameen.

Presenter1:05

What is the right artificial limb mo, and why was it so difficult to find?

Mohamed Amin1:10

Well, the arm that I have is electronically operated and it works with my muscles and my mind.

Mohamed Amin1:17

I didn't really know where to go look for an arm because it's not something that one ever worries about until something like this happens. And so after my accident, the immediate reaction was that I've got to get back to work and I need an arm to be able to operate

Mohamed Amin1:33

uh the cameras because I was uh quite

Mohamed Amin1:36

determined to carry on.

Mohamed Amin1:38

the business that I was in as a television news cameraman. But at the same time, I talked to VisNews, the organization that I work with, if they could modify my camera so I could operate the camera with one arm because

Mohamed Amin1:53

While I was shopping for an arm, I still felt that

Mohamed Amin1:58

Perhaps these doctors are right, that there is no arm that would be of much value to me, that I should start getting.

Mohamed Amin2:06

Used to looking at alternatives. And the alternative was to modify the camera. And VisNews, with their engineers,

Mohamed Amin2:12

started to look at the possibilities of how to modify a camera to operate with one arm. It took them a bit of time, but they managed to transfer the key functions from the left hand to my right hand, actually my right thumb, most of the functions.

Presenter2:27

So you can change the focus or the adjust the colour balance or whatever.

Mohamed Amin2:27

Yeah.

Mohamed Amin2:29

That's

Mohamed Amin2:30

So I could adjust the color balance with my thumb, focus with my thumb, and operate the on and off switch with my thumb.

Presenter2:36

And now all the other cameramen want one.

Mohamed Amin2:37

In fact, every cameraman who's seen this camera since, they've all said, How do we get this camera modified? And my answer has been you have to blow your left arm first.

Presenter2:39

Camera

Presenter2:47

And then you found the arm. I mean, y you've got an arm, you've got an elbow, have you?

Mohamed Amin2:51

No, I don't have an elbow. I was amputated through the elbow. So I opted for a mechanical elbow.

Mohamed Amin2:57

but went for full electronics to operate my hand and my wrist.

Presenter3:02

So it's a kind of bionic armor. You can th through the impulses that are sent, you can actually move the fingers of the hand.

Mohamed Amin3:08

Yes, I mean I can operate uh the hand just like you would operate your normal hand.

Mohamed Amin3:13

The only thing I can't do is I can't sort of play with my fingers. I can open and close. That

Mohamed Amin3:18

At speeds I can control.

Mohamed Amin3:20

It's extremely powerful. I mean I the grip is terrific. I can break bottles, cans.

Presenter3:25

What you've also got, of course, now are even more followers, thousands of them across Africa and Asia, who think you're a magic man because you can spin your hand through three hundred and sixty degrees.

Mohamed Amin3:35

Well, that's right. Particularly in Africa, I mean, pe you know, people think that um this is not an art of shalom, there's something m magical, something sort of supernatural I have.

Mohamed Amin3:43

So that sort of helps to open a few more doors.

Presenter3:46

Let's get down to your music. Now, what's the first record you've chosen to play on your island?

Mohamed Amin3:51

The first wom uh piece of music that I've chosen is actually from a film out of Africa, Mozart's clarinet concerto in a major.

Presenter4:59

Part of Mozart's clarinet concerto in A major, played by Jack Brimer, with the Academy of St. Martin in the fields conducted by Neville Mariner.

Presenter5:07

You've been no stranger, Mo, over the past thirty years to war, famine, assassination, massacre across Africa and Asia. Do you still feel the same level of fear when you go into a situation, or have you developed a kind of professional immunity?

Mohamed Amin5:23

No, I don't think there is such a thing as professional immunity. I do feel the fear when you're going into dangerous areas. What I try to do, and the fact that I'm still alive, although slightly less complete than when I was born, is take the risks but very calculated risks. I would go into a situation if I felt that I had fifty percent chances of coming back. If I felt my odds were worse than that, then I wouldn't go in at all.

Presenter5:52

The nature of your existence must mean, though, that that actually at at base you're a fatalist. I mean, if if if your number's up, your number's up. Is that what you believe?

Mohamed Amin6:01

You could say that I'm a fatalist, but I'm not really sure that I'm a fatalist in a idiotic way. I mean, I would take the risk and if I then got hurt, then I would accept that that was what was going to happen. I mean, I'll give you a very good example of the time that we were injured in I was injured in Ethiopia, and my colleague John was killed.

Mohamed Amin6:21

John was in fact not even hit. He got killed apparently by a shell that went by his head, and the speed and the noise of the shell split his skull. I took several direct hits, and I was very lucky to have come out of it alive. And talking to John's father, who comes from a Christian family, and he just took me aside, he's an old man, took me aside and he said,

Mohamed Amin6:44

God just loved John and John's time was up. You must not feel responsible for what happened. I couldn't accept that his father would would accept it so easily, but he just said that's that's the way God wanted it, and that's the way it was going to happen.

Presenter6:59

What do you think though when you are in these uh dangerous situations, when you're looking through the lens of your camera and maybe you are watching and you've seen some pretty appalling things through the lens maybe you're watching men killing other men and you've watched Edi Armin's men executing people, you've watched Tom Mboya, the man who might have succeeded Jomo Kenyatta, dying from an assassin's bullet in front of your eyes. What do you feel then? Do you feel fear, or do you feel that that this is not part of your world because you're looking at it through the other end of a camera?

Mohamed Amin7:29

I have my own personal feelings, but I try very hard and have succeeded not to get involved with what is going on. I would just keep my distance

Mohamed Amin7:39

Film what is going on in front of me.

Presenter7:42

But you must be tempted when you see s a a terrible injustice, appalling injustice, to step and say, Hang on a minute, you know, to try and intervene.

Mohamed Amin7:42

But you must

Mohamed Amin7:49

I have been tempted on several occasions to try and do that, but I have refrained from doing it because it is extremely dangerous when something like an execution is going on, which is being conducted by people who are in power. To try and interfere with that, the result will be that they will kill me as well, and they'll kill everybody else who is with me. While people

Mohamed Amin8:11

Looking at these pictures sitting in their comfort of their homes, think: why is this cameraman actually filming this? Why did he not stop it?

Mohamed Amin8:19

It it doesn't really work that way. You cannot stop.

Mohamed Amin8:23

what is going on organized by either just a mob or by, in the case of Idi Meinstein, by his army. I mean, they're armed, heavily armed, and they've decided to commit the atrocities. And I feel the the only thing we can do as newsmen is to report what is going on and let the the the viewers in the world make a judgment for themselves what they want to do about it.

Presenter8:48

Record number two.

Mohamed Amin8:50

The next record that I've chosen is really a tribute to a number of people that have encouraged me, that have worked with me, that have been in dangerous places with me, and many of them are never mentioned or recognized. And I feel that this piece of music, which is a beautiful piece of music by Bette Midler,

Mohamed Amin9:12

wind beneath my wings typifies the team that's actually helped me through the last thirty years of my profession.

Speaker 39:23

Did you ever know that you're my hero?

Speaker 39:31

Everything I would like to

Speaker 39:42

The goal.

Speaker 39:47

You are the wind.

Presenter9:49

My wing.

Presenter9:52

Bet Middler and Wind Beneath My Wings.

Presenter9:55

How did you discover Mohammed in the first place? What you wanted to do? Was it was it a love of photography, or was it a nose for news? How did you get going?

Mohamed Amin10:04

I was in uh school in Dar es Slam as a child of uh about fourteen years of age, and we had a photographic society in our school, and I succeeded in becoming a member. I had to hide my interest in photography from my family because my parents particularly they're very religious, very orthodox, and uh taking pictures in Islam is not

Mohamed Amin10:27

Is not something that was encouraged, certainly not at that time. Having joined the society, I had access to the equipment, which I couldn't afford, and neither could my parents afford, even if they were willing to give it to me. They weren't willing to give it to me anyway. And

Mohamed Amin10:43

While I was in school, I then took a lot of pictures in the school. We had access to all the school events. And the deal with the society was that we were allowed to sell the pictures to the other students. And half the money went to the society and half to the individual who took the pictures. And by doing that, I managed to make enough money to, in fact, buy my own camera. And while I was still in school, I started taking interest in news pictures. And I remember the very first pictures that ever got published were published in the local newspaper Tanganika Standard, were of Bobby Job. I was a Queen's Scout, and we were cleaning the gardens of the State House. And the governor then, Sir Richard Turnbull, gave us a bob for what we were doing. And I took some pictures, and those were the first pictures

Mohamed Amin11:38

to ever have been published.

Presenter11:40

Do you remember what you made for them?

Mohamed Amin11:41

Uh I made one guinea each, but I think I spent a lot more than that buying the newspapers,'cause I think I must have bought a hundred copies of the paper.

Presenter11:50

So you you began to operate out of Dar es Salaam. But what about professional rivals? Did they try to scupper you? Did did they find this rather persistent and enthusiastic young thing a bit of a pain?

Mohamed Amin12:01

Yes, it was. In fact, when I look back on it, I think it was very sad how I was kicked around by the professionals. I was misled. I was they often tried to stop me in going to the events. Fortunately, I don't think this sort of rivalry exists these days. At least I haven't come across it recently.

Presenter12:19

But there must be professional rivalry these days. I mean, surely when two sets of news gathering organizations are out somewhere after a story or after somebody and nobody knows who he is, I mean tremendous rivalry.

Mohamed Amin12:21

Good.

Mohamed Amin12:30

There is on a new story when you're working for different organizations. But I think if I certainly, if I came across a new

Mohamed Amin12:39

young budding cameraman, and he needed a bit of help. If I couldn't give him help, I certainly wouldn't mislead him.

Presenter12:45

What are your professional rules in the field these days towards your rivals? I mean, you you might obviously help a a rival in trouble in the field, but would would you share a story? Would you share a vital piece of information? Would you help him get his film out?

Mohamed Amin13:00

Yeah

Mohamed Amin13:01

I would not share um information, I would not give uh access to facilities to get uh the film of my opposition out, but that's just the rule of the game. Neither would they do for me.

Presenter13:13

Record number three.

Mohamed Amin13:15

My record number three is a record that I have chosen really as a message to my friends to remind them that I'm not about to change. I've ov often been accused of being pig-headed, stubborn, belligerent, awkward person to work with because I have always, in the end, done the things my way.

Speaker 313:39

Bing

Speaker 313:41

I did all that.

Speaker 313:44

And may I say

Speaker 313:48

Not in a shy way.

Speaker 313:51

Oh no.

Speaker 313:54

Oh, no, not me.

Speaker 313:57

I didn't.

Speaker 313:59

My way

Presenter14:02

Franksonata and My Way.

Presenter14:06

So you set up your own business, Mohammed Almeen, in the early sixties in Daes Salaam, first as a stillsman and then um filming. Do you remember what the first job was you did for television?

Mohamed Amin14:16

The first television story I did was of two white South Africans who broke

Mohamed Amin14:22

a jail, stole a plane and arrived in Dar es Salaam. I filmed the story and um I didn't know who I should sell it to. I then called the British High Commission and asked for

Mohamed Amin14:34

the television stations in in Britain, and they gave me the address of B B C and I T N.

Mohamed Amin14:39

And I then asked them, do you know who pays more? And they said ITN. So I sent the story to ITN and got twenty five pounds for the story. And thereafter, I continued filming as well as taking stills.

Presenter14:51

But of course during the sixties there it did seem as if plenty was happening in your part of the world. You had the uprising in Zanzibar and the Djibouti massacre and then later on in the sixties the assassination of Tom Boyer. And on that occasion you were actually on the spot and and filmed the man dying. A lot of people have remarked on your uncanny knack of being in the right place at the right time. Is it luck or is there a certain intuition? What do you put it down to?

Mohamed Amin15:15

Well, a lot of it is luck. I mean, in the case of the assassination of Tom Momboya, I just happened to be at home having my lunch and a friend of mine who was in the next shop buying shoes phoned me and I was just down the road and I was in fact uh at the scene long before the police or the ambulance got there. In fact I actually took Tom Momboya at the back of an ambulance to the hospital.

Presenter15:36

But that was luck, as you say.

Presenter15:38

There must be some intuition as well, but it must also ultimately be down to hard work behind the scenes, having good contacts, knowing systems. Is that what you'd really put it down to?

Mohamed Amin15:49

Absolutely. I mean this particular assassination we're talking about was very much locked.

Mohamed Amin15:53

But most of the stories, you know what is going on. You have a pretty good idea what's going on. And there is a hell of a lot of hard work and context to get to the place

Mohamed Amin16:05

At the right time and with a reasonable amount of security to actually be able to get in and get out.

Presenter16:11

But how do you cultivate the context? Does that mean constantly bringing them up or taking them out or doing them a favour? Is that what you do?

Mohamed Amin16:18

Well, my contacts really now go back over the last thirty odd years. And many of the people in power, particularly in Africa, many of the people in power were either my schoolmates or people that I met at different times over the last thirty years who are very junior government officials who are now presidents or prime ministers in various countries who are military commanders. And it's just many, many years of contacts. And even if there is somebody I don't know, there's always somebody I know who knows him well who could help open the doors for me.

Presenter16:51

It also must be a matter of language. How many languages do you speak?

Mohamed Amin16:54

I speak fluently fourteen languages. That always helps.

Mohamed Amin16:58

Sometimes I may not actually use the language to get access to a place, but it is very useful to know what everybody else is talking about because often they don't think that you understand what they're saying. I mean, at times it actually saved my life because you're in a very tricky situation and you know that these people are discussing that I shouldn't be there and they don't know that I understand the language and it's very useful to have a head start to to what

Mohamed Amin17:27

The people that um uh you're around are actually thinking about about me.

Presenter17:33

Next piece of music

Mohamed Amin17:34

My next piece of music is a very popular and very famous Swahili song. This particular one was sung by Mariam McKeba, but it's become a symbol

Mohamed Amin17:47

of African liberation movement, a symbol of African culture, because the song was put together in late six in late fifties and early sixties, and Maria Makeba, who is a South African uh singer, was very much involved with the liberation movement. And the song is Malaika.

Speaker 318:09

Malayka

Speaker 318:12

Nakupenda malaika

Speaker 318:19

My light.

Speaker 318:28

Dinge ku wa wa bajiwe.

Presenter18:34

Think I cool.

Speaker 318:35

Da da da da.

Presenter18:37

Miriam McCaber singing Malaika. We were talking about contacts, Mo. One of the most significant people you cultivated over the years was E. D. R. Meen, who came to power in Uganda, of course, in nineteen seventy one. How did you come to know him?

Mohamed Amin18:50

It was actually quite by accident. The day he overthrew the then President of Bote.

Mohamed Amin18:55

There were a number of us journalists trying to get into Uganda and we were sitting at this charter company's office who would not fly unless we had permission. And the phone rang and I just happened to be next to the phone, so I picked it up and the guy there on the other end said this is the command post. So I said, Can I talk to General Amin?

Mohamed Amin19:18

And he said, Who is calling? and I said, My name is Mohammed Ameen.

Mohamed Amin19:21

And a couple of clicks, and I was through to generally mean. I did not.

Mohamed Amin19:26

Think for a second.

Mohamed Amin19:28

that the operator thought that I was some relative of his. So I was talking to General Amin and explained to him that we were a group of journalists wanted to come to Uganda.

Mohamed Amin19:39

And he sort of bust out laughing. He said, um

Mohamed Amin19:42

Yes, you're welcomed. Everything is great. People love me. You can come over. So

Presenter19:47

And he wanted to be filmed.

Mohamed Amin19:48

And he wanted to be filmed. And I said, Well, you know, we need permission to land. So he took the registration number of our plane.

Mohamed Amin19:54

and said, I will send transport for you to the airport.

Presenter19:58

And then after that, I mean, you did get to know him, and and he did come to trust you. How did you win his trust?

Mohamed Amin20:03

Well, I think he when I I met him that very day that he took over and um thereafter every time I was around he always called me over and talked to me and he often jokingly said in conferences, he said uh this is uh Edi Amin Junior pointing to me. I must say I didn't quite like those compliments. I think you said I mean you you

Presenter20:23

I didn't say I mean, you you you knew, or you you came to know quite quickly that that he was a madman, that he was guilty of committing the most appalling atrocities, but you went on cynically cultivating him because obviously his actions made news. Did you have any qualms about that?

Mohamed Amin20:38

I I don't think the guy was mad mad as such. I think whatever he did, he thought about it and he did it systematically.

Mohamed Amin20:46

I continued working around him.

Mohamed Amin20:48

simply as a journalist.

Mohamed Amin20:50

The reason he

Mohamed Amin20:52

took some liking towards me, if that's the right word, I don't know, but is because he was able to identify with somebody that he'd seen before.

Mohamed Amin21:00

And although he knew that I had filmed many of his atrocities, which was very bad publicity for him, he seemed to have the attitude that there was no such thing as bad publicity. He allowed me to film executions, he allowed me to film situations which I would have thought anyone with a bit of sense would not allow, but he didn't seem to care about that.

Presenter21:23

So if he wasn't mad he was stupid.

Mohamed Amin21:25

I think he was stupid, yes, definitely.

Presenter21:27

Record number five.

Mohamed Amin21:29

The next record that uh I have chosen is um

Mohamed Amin21:32

to remind myself

Mohamed Amin21:35

in times of difficulties, in times of trouble, in times when I'm going through a crisis, that I'm still a lot better off than I could be. And I think this particular piece of music by Ned King Cole

Mohamed Amin21:50

A smile brings that message across to me.

Speaker 321:53

That's the time you must keep on trying.

Speaker 322:00

Smile, what's the use of crying?

Speaker 322:07

You'll find that life

Speaker 322:10

It's still worthwhile.

Speaker 322:15

If you just

Presenter22:18

Smile.

Presenter22:22

Natkin Cole singing Smile

Presenter22:24

Tell me then, Mohammed Amin, about Ethiopia, nineteen eighty four, and the the terrible starvation there. It was known there was a famine, wasn't it? It w it was the scale of the thing that was such a shock.

Mohamed Amin22:35

The famine had actually been there for quite a long time, and I had covered famine dozens of times before.

Mohamed Amin22:42

But we were aware that the situation was much worse in Northern Ethiopia. And for ten years before, nobody for during those ten years had been allowed to go into those areas.

Presenter22:56

No foreign journalist at all.

Mohamed Amin22:57

Nobody, no foreigners at all, not even relief agency people, because there was a war going on there. The Ethiopian government were using Soviet troops, Cuban troops in those areas, and they didn't want any presence of any fore any other foreigners in the in that area. It took a long time, five or six months, to persuade the various officials that we were only interested in famine.

Presenter23:22

So finally, in you went, you and Michael Burke and Mike Woldridge, the two reporters, and there you saw those multitudes sitting in silence waiting to die. It it must have been fairly crushing.

Mohamed Amin23:37

It was the worst sight that I think anybody could ever see. We were in one camp. There were.

Mohamed Amin23:43

Over eighty thousand people there.

Mohamed Amin23:45

And there was a little bit of food there, possibly enough for thirty or forty people. And looking at this official, the Ethiopian official, who was trying to be fair to everybody, he would pick one person from one one side of this huge ground and then go on the other side and try to try to share this food and try to be fair to the people, you know, which was absolutely ridiculous because eighty thousand people and they were all going to die and there was there was just really no hope. And it was

Mohamed Amin24:16

It was so shattering to see a scene like that. The other.

Mohamed Amin24:21

Situation that made a very strong impact on all of us was the pride and the dignity of the people. None of them screamed, none of them bitched or moaned about anything. They just sat there and they knew the mothers knew the children were gonna die, the husbands knew the wives were gonna die, they just sat there and accepted the fate. And many of those people

Mohamed Amin24:44

Died. I mean, some of them died in front of our cameras. There was absolutely nothing we could do. I was filming and

Mohamed Amin24:51

The only thing I remember is there was no discussion between us. I mean, normally if you're out

Mohamed Amin24:56

On a location with a correspondent, there's a lot of ideas exchanged, and the way we should be doing very short.

Mohamed Amin25:04

I remember there was absolute silence. I just wandered through with my camera and just filmed whatever I could see and everywhere I turned my camera there were people dying.

Mohamed Amin25:12

And um

Mohamed Amin25:14

After a couple of hours there, you know, we just walked back.

Mohamed Amin25:19

In silence.

Presenter25:20

Yeah.

Mohamed Amin25:20

It was certainly the worst experience in my life. Some more music.

Mohamed Amin25:25

My next choice is um a tribute.

Mohamed Amin25:28

To the one person who, after seeing the famine pictures in October 1984,

Mohamed Amin25:35

got the world to rally around and raise literally billions of dollars worth of help for the famine victims in Ethiopia at the time.

Mohamed Amin25:48

And this tribute is to Bob Gildoff who got banded together and the song is Do They Know It's Christmas?

Speaker 325:59

Please plan for everyone here too.

Speaker 326:03

Underneath that diamond song, do they know it's Christmas time at all?

Presenter26:26

Band Aid and Do They Know It's Christmas. We should say, Mohammed Amin, that there is another side to your work, which is that you do film and enjoy filming wildlife, which is strange really, because I I would have thought it required quite a different mentality from um the hot news man at work, you know, that it required patience and time and quiet dedication.

Mohamed Amin26:46

I took fascination to wildlife right from my early days. Um in fact, when we were living in Dar es Slaam, I would have to go around the various windows in my house to see if there were any lions or giraffes in the garden, because sometimes it was dangerous to go out at at uh

Presenter27:02

But you live right on the edge of the bush.

Mohamed Amin27:03

We we lived right in the bush, in fact. We were the first house actually built in that area and which was full of wildlife.

Mohamed Amin27:11

And having been fascinated by the wildlife that I saw as a child, I grew into spending a fair amount of time taking pictures around wildlife.

Mohamed Amin27:21

While I am not a very patient person,

Mohamed Amin27:23

I find that going into the bush, spending time there is like a holiday for me. I work just as hard as I would do covering a hot news story, but I would spend hours and hours, sometimes as much as several days, spending nights out in the bush taking pictures of animals.

Presenter27:41

You could, of course. I mean, you could dedicate yourself to doing that. You and make documentaries or take photographs for books, and then you could hire yourself out as a consultant to eager young journalists and smooth the path for them to the stories. Why don't you do that?

Mohamed Amin27:56

I'm afraid I if I gave up filming, particularly filming the big stories, and the big stories are disasters and wars and coups and horrors, I would find it very difficult to live. I get a kick out of going out on big stories and I really enjoy when I'm I'm I think I'm at my best. I'm I'm usually a very difficult person to work around, especially in my office, but I'm at my best when I'm in the field on a big story, because there's there's always a challenge to get the pictures and then and get them to the broadcasters that I'm working with. So I don't think I could ever

Mohamed Amin28:34

sit back and retire and uh and just be a consultant. I think that was just what killed me.

Mohamed Amin28:40

Seventh record.

Mohamed Amin28:42

My next record is an unusual choice. It's it's a beautiful Indian song. It reminds me of my.

Mohamed Amin28:49

uh roots where my parents originally came from and it's just a beautiful story of um this uh young dancing girl who was in love uh with one of the great Mughal emperors who later became an emperor and the song is uh Aja abetu aja by Anar Khali.

Speaker 329:10

So let's take a quarter eye

Speaker 329:19

Miri Chapte Khare Baja Rabbitoja Baja Rabbitoja Miri Prisuma Ke Kharida Rabbitoja

Presenter29:38

Anakhali and Ajah Abaytu Ajah.

Presenter29:41

I wonder if, Mohammed, you've coped with the loss of your arm in such a matter of fact way because of the death and disaster that you've witnessed over the years, that maybe when you looked down and saw that half your arm had been blown away, it was almost as if it was just another incident.

Mohamed Amin29:58

It was obviously quite a shock to see my arm being blown away, but looking back on what happened, I considered myself extremely lucky to have got away so lightly.

Mohamed Amin30:11

you know, having grown up

Mohamed Amin30:13

In a quite a religious family and with sort of very basic principles in life.

Mohamed Amin30:19

You know, my attitude was, well, life has got to go on and I just do the best I can without the army.

Presenter30:24

And by all accounts you were far more concerned about the fact that your camera had been lost in all this confusion than you were about this arm.

Mohamed Amin30:31

Yes, that's actually true. In fact, I've got into quite a lot of trouble with my colleagues because I kept shouting that they've got to pick up my cameras. And in fact, Colin Blaine, who dragged me out of the ditch, he later said to me, he said, Mohammed, we should really we were only going to make one trip because there was still so much stuff flying around.

Mohamed Amin30:49

And we really should have picked your cameras up, because nobody would have stolen you. We could have come back for you a couple of days later.

Presenter30:56

Last record.

Mohamed Amin30:57

My last record is quite a powerful piece of music that I used in one of my documentaries called Give Me Shelter. I made this film about five years ago, having traveled to thirty or so countries around the world to look at the condition that homeless people were living, which is about quarter, I'm told, quarter of the world's population do not have adequate homes.

Mohamed Amin31:24

The scenes that I saw in some of those countries, particularly in South America, were just absolutely shattering. And when I was looking for a music to go with these pictures, I chose this piece of music by Genesis, which is Land of Confusion.

Speaker 331:40

See it similar, no confusion.

Speaker 331:47

This is the world we live in.

Speaker 331:51

And these are the hands we give the

Speaker 331:55

You never let stop trying to make it a place worth living.

Presenter32:09

Genesis and Land of Confusion. So which of the eight, Mohammed, is the favourite one, if you could only take one of them?

Mohamed Amin32:16

My favourite one would be my way.

Presenter32:18

Frank Senata, my way, just to reassert your belligerence, your determination.

Mohamed Amin32:22

So

Mohamed Amin32:25

Right.

Presenter32:26

Um and your book? You've got Shakespeare waiting for you've got the Bible, which wouldn't be much use to you. We can substitute that with the Koran, if you like. But what about your own choice of books?

Mohamed Amin32:36

Right. I think my choice would be the life of John F. Kennedy. He was always my favorite person, my favorite leader in my early years, and I have

Mohamed Amin32:49

Uh had

Mohamed Amin32:50

Immense admiration for him and I'm just I'm just very fond of uh reading books about him and I've just about read every book that I can lay my hands on. And your luxury.

Mohamed Amin33:01

Well, I think you should allow me two luxuries. Should allow me my arm, which everybody else has got.

Mohamed Amin33:06

And um

Presenter33:07

That comes attached virtually, so you can take that.

Mohamed Amin33:10

And then I would like

Mohamed Amin33:12

A satellite dish with a T V set to receive the pictures uh while I'm uh planning my escape from the island.

Presenter33:19

A satellite dish and a television set. Mohammad Amin, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Mohamed Amin33:25

Thank you.

Speaker 233:33

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.