The Go-Between: Osman Yousefzada Adds ‘Author’ To His Growing Resume With An Arresting New Autobiography
The interdisciplinary artist and designer who has dressed everyone from Beyoncé to Lady Gaga speaks to us about his working class beginnings, early interest in tailoring and growing up amidst the segregated world of orthodox Muslim men and women…
The memoir opens on the ground floor of a terraced house in Birmingham, England, where Osman is a young Muslim boy living with his four siblings, his immigrant parents and a cat named after Jason Donovan. His father, who works as a carpenter, rents out the two floors above so the family can afford to eat, and equally as important, so he can send money back to his extended family on the Afghan frontier of Pakistan. The house at 12 Willows Road is the stage for much of The Go-Between by Osman Yousefzada. It’s a place where worlds merge, and at times collide. Osman shares the insightful and moving narrative of the people who live within its walls, and the many visitors that make up the diverse communities of Balsall Heath – all told through the innocent eyes of a child.
There is a small hiatus when his Pashtun parents take the children on a seven-month trip back to their villages on the banks of the Indus, where Osman meets an extended family that is both alive and dead – accompanying his mother on heartbreaking visits to the graves of loved ones she’s lost since leaving the country. The young Osman takes the role of narrator in this memoir, with his mother Palwashay often being given the lead role: a talented seamstress who seldom leaves the house in honour of the family and community’s orthodox beliefs, she builds a whole world in the back room of their Birmingham home, where women of all religions and ethnicities commune to watch their ‘winter velvets, silky satins, chenilles and crimplene’ fabrics transformed. “Within moments, after a cup of tea, one of the women would have new curtains, a cover for her settee or a traditional salwar kameez, and if you wore western dress – with the aid of a torn-out page from a fashion magazine – you would get a new dress,” writes Osman. “The back room was where I felt most free, amongst the colourful clothes, with all the exotic birds chatting away.”
The book is a rare insight into the conversations and connections these women have behind closed doors. And Osman’s young age allows him to act as a ‘go-between’, navigating the world of men at the front of the house who discuss immigration, redundancies, honour and prayers, and equally allows him access to the precious sanctuary where women can show their faces and speak their truths.
“I was trying to open up a window into these hidden voices,” Osman tells Harper’s Bazaar Arabia of the women who discuss everything from religion, money and their husband’s beatings to high heels and handbags. “These are the voices of women that aren’t really heard or shown, they’re not really a conversation that’s had, but here they’re all seen through a child’s view, where it’s non-judgmental.”
This style of storytelling means Osman can cover heavy topics such as domestic violence, gender and social inequality, racism and fundamentalism alongside more humorous content. “The book is just a recording of everything that’s happening, at one point you’ve got talk of me eating jelly which ends up being haram, then you have domestic violence, one minute it’s about favourite foods and then it’s someone crying or someone laughing, and all of this is told by someone who is just looking up at this world in wonder, from what I thought at the time was a safe space.”
The young Osman is fascinated by the many female characters that fill his home and as he weaves in their separate stories, he is equally enchanted by the textiles that they bring into his house, using off-cuts to fashion a Devoré dress and pink Terylene burqa for his sister’s replica Barbie. He becomes a personal shopper for many of the women, picking out colourful shoes he knows the women can’t wear in public but watches as they discuss them in the privacy of his mother’s back room atelier. Osman observes and learns from his mother’s techniques and the reader starts to piece together his journey to becoming a designer.
For the teenage Osman, that migration is less clear, and when he eventually leaves Birmingham, it’s to study anthropology at SOAS University of London. But months of late-night parties, meeting new friends, making clothes and exploring identity land him at Central St Martins to study fashion, and then on to a masters degree in philosophy at Cambridge University. Life as an award-winning designer, and artist whose exhibits have graced institutions including the IKON gallery and V&A, then follow. Osman’s work has always been heavily influenced by the narrative of the underdog artisan, be it through the sustainability practices that are key in his designs or the profound words of Indian garment workers in his art – those who can not afford to ‘dream big’ like the western consumers of the goods they make.
“I see my book as an extension of my story telling across different mediums; how to have the same conversation in different ways”
Osman Yousefzada
“I see my book as an extension of my storytelling across different mediums; how to have the same conversation in different ways,” explains the multi-hyphenate. “And so for me, those conversations are about working with artisans and having the sovereignty to put their conversation to the forefront. I come from a family of artisans, a really working class family, my parents can’t read or write in any language, so this idea of social mobility kind of runs through my work.”
But the designer is careful in the way he steers this storytelling, in particular a chapter about local Muslim girls being removed from school before they hit their teens. “There were challenges, for my sisters’ stories, I asked them to actually read that chapter as I didn’t really want to be the teller of their story,” he explains. “So I asked them to write stuff down, which they did and then sent me texts with other bits. That was basically the basis of that chapter, as I didn’t really want to come from a point of privilege. They had a tough time with that, so I didn’t really want to do that part without them being part of the conversation.”
Plain, simple storytelling is key for Osman, and even towards the end of the autobiography when he rebuilds a relationship with his father following a period of estrangement, he refrains from opinion. He continues to travel as a go-between in two disconnected worlds – a Britain where he’s been accepted into the echelons of high fashion and art, where his mother is shocked to hear that people will pay thousands of dirhams for a dress or go to see works she’s inspired in a gallery, and the simpler space where being safe in a foreign country meant looking inward. Osman beautifully navigates a plethora of identities in this piece of essential reading.
The Go-Between by Osman Yousefzada is published by Canongate Books Ltd and now available in the region.
Photography: Jason Alden
From Harper’s Bazaar Arabia’s March 2022 issue