They found her independence and lack of willingness to follow their customs personally offensive. Eli had met a woman in Liberia and the family did not like her. Both Afi and her mother saw Aunty as a blessing and someone they owed a lot to.Īunty hatched a plan to marry Afi to her middle son, Elikem. Aunty gave her an electric sewing machine as a gift. She apprenticed in a sewing shop and then got work as a local seamstress. When Afi did not qualify to attend a public university, her mother wanted to take a loan, so she could attend a private university. Later, a rich woman in the community gave her mother a job and a place to stay. Her daughter, Mawusi, was Afi’s best friend. One of his wives allowed them to move in with her.

However, he was offended that her mother hadn’t allowed some of his children to stay in her home while his brother was alive.

The oldest son, her father’s brother, was expected to provide for them after his father’s death. After Afi’s father’s death, they had to move out of their home, which was provided by her father’s employer. It’s been 10 years since her father died and she and her mother have been on their own. Afi is a young woman living in Ho, outside Accra. His elegant wife Mina (Lubna Azabal) runs front of shop.His Only Wife is a novel by Peace Adzo Medie. Like Daniel Day-Lewis’s couturier in Phantom Thread, Halim is an obsessive artist, refusing to use a sewing machine and infuriating his rich customers by keeping them waiting for his masterpieces.

Ridiculously good-looking Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri’s handsome face is hidden away behind a caterpillar-like moustache to play Halim, a master tailor who makes hand-embroidered women’s caftans. But instead, the film’s director Maryam Touzani had put together a gentle, complex film: a love story between a gay man and his wife. It’s set in Morocco where homosexuality is a criminal offence, and for the first half an hour I assumed the emotional brace position, convinced it would end in arrest or worse for its lead character. T his tender and sad drama should come with the opposite of a content warning: a reassuring note at the start to explain that no physical harm or public humiliation will come to the gay men whose story we are about to watch.

His only wife reviews