Top Chef presenter Padma Lakshmi, the fourth wife of writer Salman Rushdie, was spotted in NYC on Friday afternoon after her former spouse was stabbed to death at a literary event by a suspected Iranian government sympathizer.
Just hours after the stabbing, his fourth wife, Padma Lakshmi, was pictured in New York City wearing a denim sweater, face mask and glasses as she exited in Manhattan. The two married in 2004, but their connection only lasted three years.
Rushdie, 75, is on a ventilator, unable to speak and likely to lose an eye, his agent said after the attack.
Rushdie was about to give a lecture on artistic freedom at New York’s Chautauqua Institution when a man rushed onto the stage and pounced on the novelist, who has lived on a bounty since the late 1980s.
Top Chef presenter Padma Lakshmi was spotted in New York after her ex-husband Salman Rushdie was stabbed to death at an event
Lakshmi tries to shield herself when she is spotted in New York City after her ex-husband was assaulted earlier in the day
The Top Chef host was spotted just hours after Rushdie was stabbed by a suspect, identified by police as Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old man from Fairview, New Jersey, who bought a pass for the event would have.
After hours of surgery, Rushdie was on a ventilator Friday night and unable to speak following an attack that has been condemned by writers and politicians around the world as an attack on freedom of expression.
“The news is not good,” wrote Andrew Wylie, his books agent, in an email. “Salman will probably lose an eye; the nerves in his arm were severed; and his liver was stabbed and damaged.’
Rushdie has long faced death threats for his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, which some Muslims said contained blasphemous passages. After its release in 1988, it was banned in many countries with large Muslim populations.
A few months later, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s supreme leader at the time, issued a fatwa, or religious edict, calling on Muslims to kill the writer and anyone involved in the book’s publication for blasphemy.
Rushdie, who called his novel “pretty bland,” went into hiding for nearly a decade. Hitoshi Igarashi, the novel’s Japanese translator, was assassinated in 1991. The Iranian government said it would no longer support the fatwa in 1998, and Rushdie has lived relatively openly in recent years.
But Iran’s leaders have since said that while they no longer support the fatwa, it can only be overturned by the leader who issued it – and he has since died, meaning it will remain in place indefinitely.
He has been married four times and has had a string of high profile romances including Lakshmi as well as Olivia Wide and models decades younger than him.
Lakshmi is seen in NYC Friday afternoon after ex-husband Rushdie was stabbed to death by an “Iranian government sympathizer.”
Rushdie’s fourth marriage to Lakshmi ended in 2007 after just three years. Pictured: the couple in 2006
Rushdie’s fourth marriage to Lakshmi proved the most contentious when, like the others, she ended in divorce and Lakshmi, 23 years his junior, wrote a heartbreaking account of their eight-year relationship.
She portrayed him as an insecure and insensitive spoiled babe in need of constant praise, feeding and attention, not to mention “frequent sex.”
The two met in 1999 at a lavish New York party hosted by media queen Tina Brown. Lakshmi claims the two had an affair and that Rushdie has promised to be with her once his rocky marriage to his third wife is complete.
Rushdie’s 2001 novel Fury was dedicated to Lakshmi. At the time of the wedding, Lakshmi was 28 years old while Rushdie was 51 years old.
While Rushdie’s previous marriages lasted more than a decade, his association with Lakshmi only lasted three years, with the writer bemoaning them in his memoir as a “bad investment,” said to be overly narcissistic and ambitious.
Lakshmi hit back at Rushdie in her own memoir, calling him “sexually needy” and insensitive to her endometriosis.
Salman Rushdie (right) with his fourth wife, model and chef-host Padma Lakshimi at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival