Taking life
At a beach in the outskirts of Karachi, my friends and I found a dying bird and were torn between the right and wrong of the situation, whether to take its life and end its misery or let nature take its own course. The moral dilemma was filmed digitally by me, and I was a mere observer by the time the decision to end the seagull's life came about.
After extracting images from the film, I photocopied the image, then photocopied the photocopy. Then I photocopied the photocopy of the photocopy of the image. I did this until I got to the 50th or 60th photocopy. I created paper negatives of the disintegrated images to make a rather unique blend of old school photography and experimental darkroom techniques. The greys are almost lost, for we knew what had to be done, but did not do it anyway. We left the bird to Mother Nature and walked away.
This piece questions the weight of responsibility, the discomfort of doing the easy thing instead of the right thing and the morals and ethics we are required to uphold.
Title : Taking Life - Untitled 1 - 14
Size : 83 cm x 115 cm
Year : 2005
Editions : 5
Medium : Experimental darkroom print - scanned and printed in Digital Form
Taking life - A narrative
I filmed my three friends as they threw rocks into the sea. I filmed them as they played in the sand and I filmed them as they played out scenes of comic violence for the benefit of my digital camcorder. I was very unprofessional, my laughing made the filming quite shaky as my dear friend Waqas would stare into the lens and scream 'you want to fight...with ME? You wanna fight with me? ‘A multitude of times, in a variety of rhythms. His voice would vibrate from high pitched squeaks to growling tones. Waqas mocked a fight with his childhood buddy Kabir, a giant in comparison to us hobbits. Hammad was somewhere in the background soaking up the sun and drawing with pastels.
Once in a while I would drift off and start recording the walls of the cliffs behind us, or the sand below us, or the never-ending sea beyond.
I found myself filming a dead bird that was floating on the waves close to shore.
It looked beautiful; wings spread apart, the bird's body floating honourably on the surface of the water. Nice footage really.
A large wave came by and toppled it over. I saw the bird, which seemed like some sort of gull, lift its head a bit. Maybe it was my imagination. I continued filming as its head stayed submerged in water. It was such a sad sight. Great imagery to add to my growing archives. My friends noticed the gull as well, and we debated whether it was alive or not. It floated about, head down as we continued wondering and staring.
Eventually, my subject got stranded on the shore like the fishes and I saw it unmistakably twitch his legs and beak about. Hammad ran up to it and flipped it over. I stopped recording just before he put the bird up straight. I must have decided that it wasn’t worth filming.
The sea refused to show any kindness to the gull, or cut it any slack. Hammad went back and picked the bird right up and took him to some rocks near by, where we all assembled around. I picked the best spot. The sunlight was perfect for some excellent shots. Hammad set about to dry the bird. He asked for a towel. Waqas was the only one with a towel.
"Do you think it will help it?" said Waqas.
Hammad retorted that it would 'freaking dry it'...maybe reduce chances of it getting hypo'freaking'thermia.
The towel was quickly given into Hammad's hands and he set to drying the poor creature. Meanwhile I was experimenting with live editing, putting in a mirror effect as I recorded. Very 70s, the effect reminded me of Led Zeppelin's 'The Songs Remain The Same' concert so many of us karachiites had pirated versions of.
After he did whatever he could do, we stepped back and watched the bird as the wind blow-dried it some more. It seemed like the wind was blowing straight through the animal's bones. Something was very wrong. It hardly moved. Maybe its wings were broken. Or maybe even worse, I suspected that many a vertebrae must have snapped. It only showed movement in the head and feet. It could not stand or walk about, much less fly away.
Soon the bird was gasping for each breath. It would lift its head high and gasp, then bring its head back down to rest it's beak on the rock. over and over and over. We discussed its chances of survival. We all came to a conclusion that one of the wild dogs would definitely eat the gull.
So we decided to take the bird's life and spare it the horrors of being eaten alive. It was a hard decision, but that was our 'verdict' in the end. Now the question was how to end its misery.
The conversation drifted into which of us has killed or sacrificed any animals before, to figure out who should be the executioner, so to speak. I continued recording, I was only an observer by then. To kill for food or pleasure or out of hate always seemed like an easy thing to do, but to kill out of this feeling of sympathy, of love of sorts, suddenly seemed like a mammoth task. We were all suddenly extremely uncomfortable. Very dejected that there was nothing we could do to help this creature stay alive. The responsibility weighed heavily upon us.
It’s funny, how we have often talked of the cold blooded way we would kill a human here at the beach if we wished to, free of moral constraints and society being so far away from us, yet we were having trouble coming to terms with taking the bird’s life for it’s own sake. It was the obvious right thing to do. But it would have been a lot easier to just leave it behind and do the wrong thing instead. I wonder how many others have faced this situation. The option of walking away from such a burden is a cowardly response, but an easy one. To not have blood on your hands is just a better option for a person. It seems to be a question of a person's character.
We figured that if we smashed a large rock onto its head, it would be fast and relatively painless. Breaking its skull or spine seemed to be a good option. Silence dawned on us all and we just stared at the bird. My thoughts spiralled away as I convinced myself, as the others did, that there was still a chance that the gull would live.
It was starting to get late, soon we had to head back to the city and resume our lives that we had left behind in the middle of the night to come to the beach. I put my camera aside. We did not talk; we left the bird to the mercy of Mother Nature, and walked away.