During the winter of 2002, a friend of mine started to suffer from strange physical symptoms - shortness of breath, allergic reactions to foods she'd been eating all her life, vivid dreams that made her perspire profusely. Her physician referred her to a psychiatrist; the psychiatrist's diagnosis was anxiety, and he prescribed a mild anti-depressive. When my friend went to have the prescription filled, the pharmacist looked at the slip of paper she handed him and said, "Oh, another one. Lately I've been selling these pills like Acamol [an over the counter painkiller]."

People reacted differently to the daily violence of 2002. Some, like my friend Diana, hibernated. She coined the term GAD (General Anxiety Disorder) for her emotional state. When I sent her an SMS inquiring, "Meet me for coffee?" she sent a cryptic reply: "Nope. GAD." Others insisted on living their lives as usual, and there was actually an amazing flurry of creativity that winter: new bars opened all the time; there were tons of new art exhibitions and many theatre and music performances. I could hardly keep up with it all. A lot of people were in a constant state of anxiety, and feared crowded places like shopping malls. Some became violent: there was a marked upswing in physical altercations between strangers over things like parking spaces and jumping what passes for a queue in Israel. Most of all, people were depressed.

Nearly all my diary entries for December 2001-May 2002, when I left for Tokyo, contain some reference to depression. I was depressed, and so was practically everyone I knew. I remember someone joking during that time that what Israel needed was a crop duster to fly over the country and spray liquid Prozac on the population.

The thing is, it wasn't a black existential depression. I didn't know anybody who was wondering about the point of being alive; in fact, there was a pervasive atmosphere of living life to its fullest. I cannot remember a single evening spent alone against my will during that entire half year. Either friends dropped over to hang out, talk desultorily and listen to music, or we went out - to lounge bars, music clubs, gallery openings and house parties. Every place and event I attended was packed with people, even at 3:00 AM on a weekday, even though hardly anyone had any money, and even though the inevitable presence of tough-looking, armed security guards was a constant reminder of the danger all around us.

And that buzz of sexual energy that is one of Tel Aviv's characteristics became a full-fledged roar. The Tel Aviv singleton's standard joke at the beginning of each winter is that it's time to find someone to help keep the bed warm during the cold, damp rainy season. But that winter finding a partner was about more than just keeping the bed warm; it was about pulling the duvet high over our heads and creating a warm little tent of safety and comfort. Nobody defined the quest for intimacy in those terms; that kind of self-awareness comes only in retrospect. But reading over my diaries and talking recently with friends has made it pretty clear that the natural human desire for intimacy was fulfilled with unusual intensity that year.

I know that there's a contradiction in writing that we were simultaneously depressed and anxious, and joyfully socializing and making love. I am unable to resolve the riddle of that contradiction, even now. After I wrote the previous installment of "How Lisa Came to Israel," I took out my diaries from that time and read them for the first time. The experience brought memories flooding back with such intensity that they felt like hallucinatory flashbacks. I was overwhelmed, and at a loss: the objectivity that made writing the previous installments relatively easy was suddenly gone, and I started to feel afraid of composing the next chapter in this saga. How could I convey accurately the strange combination of normalcy and insanity, of intensity and banality, that characterized that time?

After alternately staring at the computer monitor and walking around in a haze for a couple of days, I gave myself a mental shake and went out for drinks with Jill at Ackman, a bar on Dizengoff Square.

I told Jill about my reaction to reading my old diaries, and asked her what she remembered about that period. My question released a flood of emotional memories for her, too; we ended up talking for more than two hours, and after awhile I dug a notepad and pen out of my purse to take notes. What struck me most strongly was how similar our recall of events and emotions was, and how vivid. We discovered that we had both become obsessive diarists during that time, that we had both been dogged by a constant, heavy tiredness; that we both remembered a constant round of socializing - parties, nights out at restaurants and bars - in an atmosphere that was characterized by what Jill termed a "sick rush." And we both had one clear memory of an occasion when we were suddenly overcome by a moment of irrational panic. We talked a lot about the fear - and about the adrenalin high it generated.

For me, the fear started on December 1, 2001, with the suicide bombing on Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda Street. I was actually alerted to the bombing via an Instant Message from my friend Cecile, who then lived in New York and worked for ABC News. I switched on the television immediately upon receiving her message. It was a Saturday night, and the pedestrian mall was crowded with teenagers having a good time, roaming around and buying felafel. A suicide bomber blew himself up, killing around 20 and wounding many others. (When I mentioned that bombing to Jill, she shuddered and told me that a Hungarian friend of hers had been there, and that a severed head had landed at his feet). The rescue services and television news crews had already arrived, and police had cordoned off the area, when there was a shockingly loud, second explosion. An enormous fireball rose from behind a building at the other end of the mall. The crowd of people had been directed toward the second bomb by the police, because it was in the opposite direction from the first bombing.

When that second explosion occurred, a huge scream of terror arose from the crowd. People scattered in all directions, while the television cameras recorded the whole thing. A friend with whom I'd planned an evening out had walked in the door just as I switched on the television. We gasped when the second bomb, which turned out to be a car packed with explosives, went off on live television. We sat there, mutely, watching that unbelievable scene. After awhile I turned to him and said, "Don't you feel, lately, as though you're just waiting for the next bomb to go off?"

Yes, he said. That's exactly the way I feel.

Less than 12 hours later, a suicide bomber detonated himself on a municipal bus in Haifa, killing 14 passengers. At the time, I was living in an apartment right near the Dizengoff Center - which had been the scene of a huge bombing in 1996. And that's when the fear set in. Take a look at this short email exchange between me and my sister Adina.

That Sunday, the song played on Army Radio (Galgalatz) was U2's "Sunday, Bloody Sunday."

As the suicide bombings became ever more frequent, my diary entries became ever more curious. One day in January 2002, I filled several pages with a long description of an argument I'd had with the man I was then seeing, G. The entry ends with the words, "I can't believe I'm writing all this stuff about G. when the world is falling apart all around me. There were four bombings today." There was this constant see-sawing between self-involvement and intense, unavoidable awareness of the events going on around us. The rush of emotion following each bombing was so intense that after awhile it became too much, and I stopped reacting to the "small" bombings - the ones that killed "only" a couple of people. Actually, they merged together and I forgot about them within a day. I saved my energy for the big ones that killed more than 10 people.

And yet, while I went about my daily life on the normal-looking (except for all the security guards) streets of Tel Aviv, that anxiety was lodged in the back of my consciousness all the time. I pretended to myself that I wasn't afraid, but one day I discovered just how disingenuous the mind can be.

I was sitting in a small cafe on Jean Jaures street, near Dizengoff, writing in my diary and drinking a coffee. It was a weekday afternoon, a light rain was falling outside and the cafe was quiet, except for the voice of Jacques Brel singing "Ne me quitte pas" emerging from the stereo speakers over the espresso machine. The door opened, and a young, swarthy, bearded man with a backpack slung over one shoulder walked in. He smiled at the waitress, put his backpack on a chair near a table, and continued on to the washroom. I stared at that backpack, frozen. My mind said, "backpack, swarthy man, beard, Hamas terrorist, BOMB." I dropped my pen and stood up. There was a roaring sound in my ears. I looked at the waitress, and simply did not know what to do. I couldn't decide if I was panicking over nothing, or if I should obey my instinct to get out of there as fast as possible. But then the bearded young man emerged from the washroom, just as a smiling young blonde woman, dressed in a short denim skirt and knee-high boots, entered the cafe, greeted him in Hebrew and gave him a warm hug. I sat down again, a bit shakily, and listened to the roaring sound in my ears subside to a high-pitched ringing as I signaled the waitress for another coffee. And that's when I knew that my cool facade was just that - a facade.

One of the reasons I had so much time for writing in my diary was, of course, that I was unemployed. Desperately unemployed. For reasons that are too complicated to detail here, my former employer had paid me off the books for the first seven months of the year I worked for the company. That made me ineligible for unemployment benefits, because I needed proof - in the form of pay stubs - that I'd been employed for at least six months. Then, in one of those "I can't believe this is happening to me" turns of events, the sub-lettor of my New York apartment suddenly sent me a curt email, in which he informed me that he would be vacating the apartment at the end of the month and would leave the keys with whoever I wished. Not only was I counting on the profit I made from renting out a rent-stabilized apartment in Manhattan at near-market value, but I couldn't afford to fly to New York to sort things out and find a new tenant.

So I had no money coming in, and no job. I'd sent my CV to 43 companies, but only one bothered to reply. A certain well-known Ra'anana-based company that provides billing solutions dangled a possible job in front of me for nearly two months. I was interviewed by phone, sent a test via email, invited in for a face-to-face interview, sent to do a ridiculous day-long evaluation test ("What would you do if you didn't get along with a co-worker?"), invited in for a second interview, in which I was informed that the job involved at least two weeks of travel per month, - and then, after all that, I didn't make the final cut.

During that period the Israeli economy simply shriveled up. Foreign VC funds closed their offices in Israel, claiming there was nothing left to invest in. The industrial parks felt like eerie ghost towns. The few employed people left walked the paths between the buildings, looking haggard and speaking in muted tones. Many sandwich and salad bars that had provided lunch for people in the business districts closed; a couple of times I saw hand-written signs taped to the doors of the empty premises, announcing simply that "due to the situation" they had been forced to close.

Each night on the news, after the summary of that day's violence, there were reports that average incomes were dropping by 30 percent, and that employment was hovering around 12 percent. The reality of those numbers was a lot worse. My friends who were still employed had seen their incomes drop by 50 percent; those who were unemployed had all but given up on finding a job. After one downsized employee of a high-tech company climbed up on the roof of his office building and threatened to jump, a lot of large companies instructed the security personnel to lock the doors leading to the stairs before the latest rounds of cutbacks were announced.

There were almost no foreign visitors in the city, either. The hotels were all-but empty: walking along the beachfront at night, one could see that the multi-story hotels were like chessboards with only dark squares. Occasionally there was a single yellow square of light - indicating, I imagined, the presence of some intrepid journalist or diplomat. Nobody was coming to Israel, nobody was investing in Israel, the huge high-tech industry was on its knees, the middle class was squeezed and the poor were unable to feed their families. Chen, one of the two adorable young guys who own my local corner grocery, told me that one of his regular customers had sent her daughter in with a sandwich bag containing 10 agura coins (each worth about 2 cents), to buy half a loaf of bread.

Eva, my Algerian-born bank manager, was aware of my situation - and sympathetic. But as my overdraft grew and the weeks of unemployment became months, she started speaking to me in French - the language she uses when she is showing tough love. When her frequent phone calls began with the words, "Leeza, ma chere, il faut que..." I got knots in my stomach. She put me on a strict budget, which meant that I'd have to find a much cheaper place to live.

So I gave up my modern two-room apartment near the Dizengoff Centre, and moved in with two flatmates. The apartment was in an old building near Rothschild Boulevard, close to the first apartment I'd rented in Tel Aviv. Eran and Ilanit, my two flatmates, were nearly a decade younger than me, but we became close friends almost immediately - and have remained so ever since. They both worked full time while studying for their undergraduate degrees at Tel Aviv University. Ilanit worked for El Al as part of the ground crew, and Eran was apprenticed to his father's diamond business (his wealthy father didn't believe in spoiling his kids; until they could make a contribution to the business, they got minimum wage). Our apartment became a sort of commune, with each of us assuming responsibility for the tasks we liked. Ilanit collected the money for the bills and paid them; Eran, because he had a car, did the errands; I bought food at the shuk and prepared our meals. We let the dirt collect until we couldn't stand it anymore, then chipped in to pay a hapless foreign worker to scrape the gunk off the shower and wash the floors. The apartment was always full of people, and it became our little refuge from the scary world outside its walls.

And with Eran's help, I finally found a job - in the diamond exchange.

And thus ends Part Five - which is, once again, much, much longer than I'd planned.

NEXT: Three months of hell in the strange, strange world of the diamond exchange. Passover 2002: five bombings in five days. 20,000 reserve soldiers called up for Operation Defensive Shield. Jenin, Jenin. And what about the suffering of the Palestinians? And, finally...Tokyo.