Family and friends of Fatima Ali, the renowned Pakistani-American chef, laid her to rest in the Bagh-i-Rehmat graveyard, Bedian Road, here on Friday.
Fatima was a contestant in the American cooking competition, Top Chef, and though she did not win, she had emerged as a ‘fan favourite’. She was the daughter of Ashtar Ausaf Ali, a former attorney general, and Farazeh Durrani, a prominent educationalist.
Several members of the judiciary, including former chief justice of Pakistan (CJP) Mian Saqib Nisar, incumbent CJP Asif Saeed Khosa, judges of the high court and Supreme Court, eminent political personalities, including Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, Zaeem Qadri and Parvez Malik, attended her funeral prayers.
The young chef had felt a strong desire to change the global perception of Pakistan by introducing the country’s culture to the world through food. She was working on her own restaurant in the US. As a chef, she began learning the art at the age of six. She was popularly known to showcase diverse elements of Pakistani cuisine in her food. In Top Chef, she often used to infuse striking flavours and spices of her homeland.
However, before her plans could materialise, she was diagnosed in 2017 with Ewing’s Sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer, usually seen in children. Although she underwent surgery to remove a tumour in her shoulder bone after which she announced that she was “technically cancer-free”. But in an emotional social media post in October, she announced that her cancer was “back with a vengeance”.
