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Update, 1/25/19, 4:08 p.m.: Pakistani paper Dawn confirms Fatima died on Friday after battling terminal Ewing sarcoma. Her death comes just months after she published a piece in Bon Appetit about having a year left to live.
The last update Fati gave on her social media platforms was on January 10 to confirm she was "sick and unfortunately [getting sicker]."
Today, her friends and fellow Top Chef contestants have taken to Instagram in mourning.
Fatima was 29 years old.
Original post, 10/10/18: Former Top Chef contestant Fatima Ali, who works as a chef in New York City, was diagnosed with a rare cancer last year. She was treated for Ewing sarcoma, a cancer that occurs in bones and the tissue around the bones, shortly after filming Season 15 of the Bravo reality series. Host Padma Lakshmi was right beside her in the hospital when she went into surgery.
And though her doctors told her the cancer was gone, it didn’t last. Last month, Ali was told her cancer returned, and this time it was terminal. Doctors now say she only has one year to live, regardless of how her chemotherapy treatments turn out.
In a moving essay for Bon Appetit, Ali has opened up about knowing her cancer is terminal, and how she is spending her days knowing she doesn’t have much time left. And naturally, given her profession, a lot of those plans have to do with food.
Ali, who was also the first Pakistani woman to win on Chopped, had made plans to open a restaurant serving modern Pakistani cuisine. “I used to dream of owning my own restaurant. Now I have an ever growing list of the ones I need to visit,” she wrote.
When she shared her story to try to get a reservation at the famous Copenhagen restaurant Noma, she received a message from the chef himself, Rene Redzepi. “Turns out that people respond when you tell them you’re dying of cancer,” she wrote.
Though she is keeping her spirits up—and keeping her sense of humor intact—she explained in the essay about how her cancer has transformed her outlook on life. “It’s funny, isn’t it? When we think we have all the time in the world to live, we forget to indulge in the experiences of living. When that choice is yanked away from us, that’s when we scramble to feel,” she wrote. “I am desperate to overload my senses in the coming months, making reservations at the world’s best restaurants, reaching out to past lovers and friends, and smothering my family, giving them the time that I so selfishly guarded before.”
Lakshmi paid tribute to Ali in a moving Instagram post Wednesday. “I hope that this year brings her as much as she can hope for,” she wrote. “You’ve said on the show that growing up I inspired you. But Fati, now, it’s you who inspire me. Everyday.”
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