"What can I say? A failed and mixed-up artist haunted by demons has left this world, and the world is silent," wrote artist Talia Sidi in one of the many farewell letters she left behind. "I'm writing this in something of a tizzy. I've fallen apart completely. The fear has taken over. I'm in a bad way, a very bad way."

The letter, addressed to Eitan Hillel, Sidi's closest friend in recent years, was found on November 5 in her Tel Aviv apartment. A few hours earlier, she had decided, not for the first time, to put an end to the torment that had been her lot in life for some years. It was the story of a death foretold. Everyone sensed that it was in the air but no one was able to save her. Early one Sunday evening, she slipped through everyone's grasp.

That Sunday, in the afternoon, Sidi met her younger sister Michal in a coffee shop. Afterward, Michal went to work and Sidi headed for Dizengoff Center. There she ascended to the top floor and was stopped at the last moment by a suspicious policeman, who brought her to the police station on Harakevet Street in Tel Aviv. "Suicide attempt," the police called it.

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Sidi called her sister Michal from there and asked her to come get her out. Michal couldn't leave work, so she called their parents, Raya and Marcel, who hurried to the station, signed the release form and left with their daughter. But once they were out in the street, Sidi gave her parents the slip and took off at a run. Her father chased after her and before she finally escaped him, he heard her shout, "You don't understand me!"

The day before, on Saturday, Eitan Hillel received the last SMS from her. "Eitan, hi, my dear. You were everything to me. I've left you a package and equipment. If you come to the funeral, maybe there will be a minyan. Take care of yourself and try to cheer up my parents. Even give my poor mother a hug. Try to forgive me for having been unbearable at times."

Hillel immediately called Sidi's parents and asked if they were aware of what was going on. "And this was after - on Wednesday - I'd got her to come down from the roof at Azrieli. She called me and I talked to her for two hours. I finally persuaded her to come down. She begged me not to tell her parents. I promised her. She was afraid they would hospitalize her. But I didn't keep my promise, because in that phone call, for the first time, I heard something strange in her voice that made my blood run cold. The motifs of death were crystal clear and it terrified me. I called her parents and said there was a new situation. That I'd heard a tone of resignation in her voice and that it really worried me. They told me they were with her right then."

On Sunday, Hillel was in Tel Aviv, but he didn't call Sidi. Now he, like all the others who were close to her, is flooded with guilt feelings. "I was afraid that if I called her it would be like pressing the button. She could deteriorate so quickly, within seconds. She already felt trapped, apparently. She understood that the next stage was another hospitalization. If I had called her and gone to see her, she wouldn't have killed herself. But it most likely would have happened on another day, in another place, because the death wish was already clear. A person who decides to commit suicide will do it even if he's locked in a sealed room."

Like a bird
In their small house in Yehud, Sidi's parents sit surrounded by her paintings and drawings, and by photographs of her. Every so often, Marcel Sidi bursts into tears. His wife Raya gently comforts him. Their daughter Talia had long ago detached herself from them and created her own closed space that was out of bounds to them. In her goodbye letter to her mother, she wrote: "My dear Mother. My world has fallen apart. I know that you're not sleeping from worrying about me and I know that now it will be worse. Mother, I'm asking you, try to get back to routine. To be happy. I've been suffering terribly. It's so strong. I don't see another solution. My life is darkness. I'm taking with me the pleasant memories of you. Yours with love, your tormented daughter."

Talia Sidi was born 35 years ago in Neve Monoson. Her mother was an English teacher and her father an electronics engineer who worked for many years at Israel Aircraft Industries and currently teaches at the Technological Institute in Holon. She had a brother and a sister: Alon, 26, an electronics engineer, and Michal, 31, who works in computers. Gil, Marcel's son from a previous marriage, lives in the United States. When Sidi was in ninth grade, the family moved to Yehud, and she studied art at Thelma Yellin High School in Givatayim.

"She was a very happy child and loved by all the family and friends. She was a sweet girl and a good student," says her mother, emphasizing the word "loved." She had been painting for as long as they could remember. "When she was 3, I remember opening the door to her room and the whole floor would be covered, like a carpet, with pictures she'd painted. I'd ask her: 'What's this?' and she'd say: 'Those are all the pictures that are no good.' She was very critical of herself. She wanted to attain perfection, and that's why it was hard for her with art."

It was hard for her with art and hard for her without art. Mostly, it was hard for her with herself. Upon finishing high school, Sidi enlisted in a Nahal art unit that was posted to Mitzpeh Ramon. This was an army project that did not last, a four-year track for young men and three years for women in which recruits who were artists could combine their military service with community service on the periphery. In the Nahal unit, Sidi met Yahav Michael, who was her boyfriend for about four years.

Michael remembers her standing at the edge of the cliffs in Mitzpeh Ramon and leaning forward at a 45-degree angle, held up by the strong wind blowing from below. "Talia was a bird," he says. "She was very thin, angular. There was something birdlike about her. And she wasn't the type who could completely lose herself in unrestrained laughter. She was a serious girl."

The members of the unit worked with youth in Mitzpeh Ramon, creating artworks, putting on plays, building sets. Sidi didn't fit in that well. She worked as a street sweeper. "She was an artist in the full sense of the word," says Michael. "She was fantastically talented. She spent a lot of time on every piece. She had this incredible virtuosity, but she couldn't easily start decorating or painting sets. For her it came down to sweeping the streets or just painting. She was the treasurer of the unit. No one else could be trusted like she could. She was known for her integrity."

After her army service, Sidi began studies at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. She and Michael rented an apartment in Jerusalem. "It was a small two-room apartment," says Michael, "but Talia insisted, pleaded for a private space of her own. There was a little yard there, and I dug a cellar that was a meter and a half wide, and not very high, and together we covered the sides with cement and put on a door. She would go in there every day and close the door behind her. I have no idea what she did there."

After about a year in Jerusalem, Michael moved to Tel Aviv. Sidi continued at Bezalel, though she wasn't very fond of her studies. "In the beginning she was painting in a figurative style," says her father. "But then they told her that it was passe and it devastated her. Then she got into abstract and conceptual art and did very well. In addition to painting, she was also reading literature, poetry, philosophy. It was a pleasure to sit and talk with her about any subject in the world. She had broad horizons."

"She didn't tell us anything," says her mother. "And it really bothered us that she wasn't open toward us. And very worrisome at times, because you want to know what your child is going through."

"But she was very sociable," says her father. "She had lots of friends."

"Yes, but with us she was very closed," says her mother. "I tried and tried and didn't get anywhere. It's too bad, because maybe ..."

An extraordinary first impression
Sidi's father says that after two years at Bezalel she wanted to leave, but he convinced her to stay and finish her studies. During that time, she met Eran Shroitman, a classmate who is now the chef at Orca in Tel Aviv, and they became a couple.

"Life with her was like a movie," says Shroitman. "Talia was an amazing person. Charming, intelligent, very complex, sensitive and talented. She lived in a world of her own with rules that she dictated. In every sphere in life."

Shroitman adds: "Bezalel is an academic institution that's not necessarily right for everyone, and she learned how to survive. She found a compromise wherein Bezalel was ready to put up with her and not disturb her too much. She didn't come to painting lessons. She painted at home, read books, walked around Jerusalem, and at the end of the year she would bring in several works and they would note it as if she'd attended all her classes and pass her. Some of the teachers, who were artists themselves, understood her."

Larry Abramson, head of the art department at Bezalel, remembers a very talented student who was also quite sensitive and shy. "But when she mustered her energies she made very sharp and memorable works. I remember a series of paintings of neon lights, which is not an easy assignment. She was the quiet type. Someone who is wrapped up in herself and not so comfortable communicating with others. A lot of the classes are built on dialogue, and when you don't have that communication ability, you're less present. Talia had the intensity, but she apparently paid a heavy price for it."

It was thanks to the graduate exhibition at Bezalel in 1997 that Sidi met Eitan Hillel, who was then the owner and curator of the Mary Fawzi Gallery in Jaffa and had come to scout for fresh and promising talent. Hillel saw an unsigned work by Sidi, an installation that had been placed in a side room, and was so impressed that he went to the school office to find out who the artist was, asked for her phone number and called her. He told her that he wanted to purchase the piece and she asked for NIS 2,000.
"It seemed like a ridiculous amount; I tried to argue with her," recounts Hillel, "but that's what she wanted. It was just an excellent work. Afterward I went to her studio and saw more works and then I saw her, too. A beautiful girl, a very intriguing personality. I was immediately captivated. It was obvious that she was very serious, and the little bit of her work that I'd seen was very thoughtful and well-executed. To this day, I can't say who made whom here. Was I the one who gave Talia Sidi an opportunity or was it Talia Sidi who gave me an opportunity?"

The opportunity was two solo exhibitions by Sidi at the Mary Fawzi Gallery, the first in 1998 and the second in 1999. At the time, the gallery was something of a hub for new artists such as Adam Rabinowitz, Avner Ben-Gal, Sigalit Landau and Talia herself, and was creating a buzz on the art scene. Hillel called the phenomenon "the yellow wave."

"These are artists who really shook up the ossified society of the time," he says. "They were alternative. Real avant-garde and in-your-face, without kowtowing at all to the teachers in the art schools and the art foundations. And then a collector showed up, who wanted to remain anonymous, and started buying up the works of these artists, supporting the gallery and making more exhibits possible. It was an incredible decade. There was a lot of discussion about the essence of art and other issues in the culture."

The decade came to an end in 2000. The artists dispersed to various galleries and some moved abroad. The Mary Fawzi Gallery closed. Hillel went to live in the Galilee. Sidi received the Young Artist Prize from the Education Ministry and moved to the Sommer Contemporary Art Gallery. In 2001, she had a solo show there. It was an architectural, political, urban installation, a combination of materials - mirrors, photographs and much more, that together created a cramped and violent urban experience.

"A mature and wise exhibit, a new peak of originality and quality," wrote critic Uzi Tzur, who called Sidi a "master who, wielding a poetic scalpel, makes fascinating use of contemporary, industrial, available materials that retain their original nature yet also soar as part of contemporary art."

Sidi was not particularly moved by all the media fuss about her. That same year she received the Oscar Hendler Prize and presented an exhibition of self-portaits at the museum in Kibbutz Lohamei Hagettaot. In an interview with Sara Breitberg-Semel in Studio magazine, which devoted its cover and four pages to her works, Sidi admitted that at the end of her studies at Bezalel she did not think she would ever be an artist.

"For someone who had just finished Bezalel, she had great promise with her very unique creativity and meticulousness," says Irit Sommer, owner of the Sommer Gallery. "She wasn't afraid to try different materials. There was something ascetic about her. She lived in a modest apartment. She made do with little, so as to focus just on what really mattered. She had a gentle, very precise voice. It didn't shout with pathos and drama. It was something very introverted, yet with a lot of strength. She wasn't interested in the whole outer world of commerce in art."

Shortly before the exhibition, the collector Benno Kalev purchased several of her drawings. "She called me and introduced herself, and then she came over with a portfolio of works," he says. "She impressed me with her sensitivity and with the materials she used, and I bought several pieces right away. And that hardly ever happens the first time I meet an artist. I usually follow artists for a while and only buy their works when I'm convinced that it opens a new window in my collection, or deepens one that already exists, and when I'm sure that the statement it makes isn't just random. And with her it was really extraordinary. I couldn't resist. I knew it at first sight. I saw how much promise she had. I was certain. I saw that there was something very special about her. What a waste of a life."

The man who would ruin everything
Sidi's other battle in life began at about the same time. The crisis that had been wracking her soul came to light. The charming and intriguing woman, the total artist, became obsessively suspicious.

"On the one hand, she put a lot of faith in me," says Sommer, "and on the other, she was wary and trying to figure out what my ulterior motive was. She constructed these imaginary scenarios, she didn't want to part with works, she acted like they were her children. She suffered when they were purchased for money and would go to the collectors' homes to visit her paintings. As the exhibition approached, she became very tense. It became very hard to represent her."

Sommer wasn't the only one who noticed Sidi's odd behavior. Talia's father, Marcel, tells of an obsession she developed regarding Dr. Yoav Ben-Dov, then a lecturer in the philosophy of science at Tel Aviv University. "He gave a lecture when she was studying at Bezalel," says her father, "and I think she fell in love with him. She decided to do a master's degree in philosophy at Tel Aviv University. Because of him. She always denied it, said there was nothing between them, but other people told me that there was something, and maybe what happened is that he didn't want her. And then one day she decided that he was the devil and was pursuing her everywhere. That's what led to her death. She had a paranoid obsession that he was the source of all her troubles, that he wouldn't allow her to have a family, that he was ruining all her work."

Raya Sidi: "We noticed it four years ago. We didn't know everything. She didn't live at home. One day she invited me to meet her at a coffee shop and she asked me if I'd ever heard of Yoav Ben-Dov. I said no, and then she suddenly started sobbing. I asked her what was wrong, and she said: 'It's nothing. Everything's okay,' and you just want to believe that everything is okay, so I didn't pry too much. Afterward I wrote an English textbook with her. She did the illustrations for what I wrote, and we had a lot of negotiation, and one day I came to her home and saw that she'd written on the windowframe - 'Yoav Ben-Dov is a son of a bitch.'"

"She started working on a computer," says her father, "and one day she called and said: 'Dad, Yoav Ben-Dov is wrecking my computer.' I went over to her place and saw that it was an old computer that couldn't be fixed, so I got rid of it and bought her a new one and told her, 'You see, he's not wrecking it anymore.' And then she started to say that he was poisoning the food and the water in her house."

This episode culminated in an involuntary hospitalization, the first of many. "The doctors couldn't exactly define her illness," says her mother. "They had disagreements about it." At the same time, more or less, Sidi stopped working at art. She devoted herself to philosophy and became caught up in false, obsessive thoughts. She went to a well-known healer in town and fell in love with him, too.

"She was frustrated that she wasn't painting," says her mother. "But she didn't want to go to a psychologist or psychiatrist because she didn't accept that she had a mental problem. She became obsessed with this healer, who had told her after a few sessions that he couldn't help her and refused to see her again."

Dr. Yoav Ben-Dov no longer teaches at Tel Aviv University. Today, he devotes most of his time to mysticism. He remembers Sidi, but was unaware that she had committed suicide. "She would call me from time to time," he says. "I talked to her, I tried to explain to her that I had nothing to do with the things she attributed to me. But the more I tried to explain, the more powerful the feeling became for her. It only increased her feeling of a conspiracy."

Did you meet with her?

"We got together once, as far as I remember. Her parents called me, too. They wanted to meet, but I said that I would only do so on condition that we were accompanied by a mental health professional. I didn't know what I could do."

Was there anything between you?

"I don't think so. Not that I remember. But my memory of it is very hazy."

According to Yahav Michael, the illness started long before. "It was there from the time she was born, she just hid it. She believed that there was another girl just like her in a parallel universe and that she could feel her and talk to her. She never doubted that the real world was one of lies and conspiracy.

"Talia's reality was one of wars between the forces of darkness and the forces of light. It sounds like the hallucinations of a crazy person, but when Talia talked about it, it sounded like a person who had invented a new mythology. Science fiction mixed with ancient mythology, with the Gilgamesh story and modern cybernetics. She was suspicious of people. She had all kinds of little paranoias - the man from the grocery store was in cahoots with the neighbor from across the street. She'd wander around Jerusalem in very dangerous places, disappear half naked, and I'd find her in the Valley of the Cross or in the alleys of the Muslim Quarter."

Stronger than the various little paranoias was her fear of hospitalization and medication. She only took medications during the times she was hospitalized, and then only against her will. They were the enemy. They caused serious side effects, and she also believed that someone was trying to use them to take over her brain. And she suspected all the people around her, except for Eitan Hillel and one girlfriend, of collaborating with the forces of darkness. Sidi gradually broke off contact with most people and felt compelled to keep moving from place to place all the time. She would switch apartments, disappear for a time, wander around the country and then reappear eventually.

Love is not enough
In 2002, Sidi went to New York. There, through her friend Avner Ben-Gal, she met Nir Hod. "When I saw her I remembered her face, from some exhibition at Mary Fawzi," says Hod. "There was a kind of magic between us and we became very close friends. For a while we were a couple. There was something so gentle and sensitive about her, and she was so intelligent and thoughtful. I was very intrigued and excited by her. But at a certain point I felt that there was something strange about her too. She talked to me about all these people from Tel Aviv - I had no idea who they were - and said they were broadcasting ideas to one another and organizing things via thought waves. I remember saying to her: 'Talia, this sounds weird, like a kind of schizophrenia.' I didn't know how to deal with it. And one day she said to me: 'I hope you're not in cahoots with anyone.' I remember that we had a fight. It was too much for me. I was there in New York and wasn't ready to deal with people from Tel Aviv that I didn't know and who didn't interest me. It was very sad, and it put distance between us."

The last battle in Sidi's life began when she returned from New York. In 2003, she was invited to take part in a group exhibition in Holon called "Mashehu Mekomi" (Something Local), curated by Galit Eilat from the Holon Video Center. Sidi chose to dye the water in one of the city fountains with red food coloring. The water that came out looked like blood. After that, she hardly worked at art, aside from a few pieces she did at the request of Hillel, who, up until the end, remained the person closest to her, outside the circle of the "conspiracy."

"I made an agreement with her that she would paint one painting for me each month and that I would buy it from her. At the same time, I made an agreement with her parents, who gave me the money. And she painted, because she didn't want to let me down."

The last paintings are now in her parents' home, and seem a metaphor for her mental state. They show fluid figures with hollow stares, a bird tied with a rope, a blindfolded man striding toward death - strong hints at the looming end.

Six months ago, even in the midst of all her pain, after repeated hospitalizations and ongoing self-imposed seclusion, Sidi managed to surprise even herself. She met Yuval Marom, who had been in her class at Thelma Yellin high school, and fell in love.

"It was love at first sight," says Marom, an artist. "We met through a friend. The first time we met, we sat and talked for something like seven hours. We were amazed by the fact that we had been in the same class for three years and never really noticed each other. She was very special in the Tel Aviv landscape. She was curious to know why I was happy and why I was smiling. I didn't understand what she was asking. Afterward, I knew, but it didn't bother me too much. When you fall in love, you fall in love. Over time, she told me some things. Not everything, though, because she was afraid I would run away and leave her. But I wouldn't have, because I already loved her. In the two months we were together, we were together all the time. We were already talking about starting a family and having children.

"Two months ago her condition deteriorated, and she said that before we got too serious, she wanted to be alone and settle things with herself. I didn't quite understand what she meant, but I said okay."

The relationship continued, he says, but not like before. She told him she loved him but she also seemed aloof, and her condition worsened. "I never treated her like a sick person, but as a healthy partner in every way, and that's what made her feel good," says Marom. "In the last week we got together again and it was good. Sometimes I felt that she didn't really want to get out of it. That she was giving me one hand and with the other holding onto this dark part. A week before it happened I was staying with some friends in Caesarea and she called and said that she was thinking that something very bad was going to happen. But she would often say things like that."

In the letter Sidi left for Marom, she wrote that he gave her the most beautiful months of her life and that she was leaving him all of her savings.

Her parents also sensed that the end was near. Her father went to her house every day. "I told her that I wanted to sleep over, but she refused. She would say she had to go out and chase me out. The three last days, she became very affectionate. She would hug me. I told my wife that something was wrong.

"On Saturday she got a little angry at me; she thought I was conspiring with Yoav Ben-Dov. Then she said, 'Let's go for a walk.' I hugged her with a lot of love. We went for a walk, we came home and she said, 'Dad, another hug and another hug.' And that was it."

"We couldn't help her," says Raya Sidi. "She didn't want to acknowledge the problem. She didn't want to humiliate herself. She had this pride that wouldn't let her accept help."

Do you have guilt feelings?

"We all have guilt feelings, each in his own way," replies Raya Sidi. "I, because I didn't search for her boyfriend's phone number and didn't send him to go check on her in the final moments. Her sister for not having paid her more attention. Her father for not arranging for her to see that healer and to see Yoav Ben-Dov. In a letter to the healer, which we sent to him for her, she wrote: 'For a few days I've been trying to kill myself, climbing up on roofs, but because of my mother, I can't do it.'"

"Her illness was a nightmare for the whole family. Hell. We were always trying to learn what she was up to. We were terribly worried. Marcel collapsed once in class. He had a mild stroke. It was very hard on the other children. Their beloved, successful and admired sister. But the biggest thing is that she suffered indescribable anguish."

"It at least gives me just a drop of comfort to know that she has been relieved of this suffering," says her father.
Four weeks ago, on Sunday evening, Talia Sidi was found at the new central bus station.

"There are many types of truth," says Shroitman, "and there will still be a great mystery here that she took with her to the grave. Many dimensions are still not deciphered. That's Talia. All or nothing."