Correlation Is Not Causation

Translated from the Hebrew by the author

The shopping cart is heavier on days that soldiers die. It’s not just a feeling—Ruth Mutzafi knows the difference between feelings and facts. “Correlation is not causation,” says her granddaughter Ziv, who is studying sociology at Bar-Ilan. Ziv not only told her this but also insisted that she repeat the words over and over again so that the concept would become part of her very being: correlation is not causation, correlation is not causation. “What that means,” Ziv admonishes, “is that if there is a phenomenon X that seems to you always follows right after phenomenon Y takes place, that does not mean that phenomenon Y causes phenomenon X.”

On the morning news they announced that seven soldiers were killed in Gaza. During the morning bulletin and Aryeh Golan’s “It’s All Talk” program afterward, Ruth drinks her coffee and eats a slice of bread with white cheese and cucumber slices. There’s always a lot of talk after the news. “That doesn’t mean that the news causes the talk?” she asks Ziv, when she calls to calm her down. Ziv sounds skeptical. “Maybe yes, maybe no. It’s something that needs to be checked, Savta.”

During Aryeh Golan, Ruth feels like having another slice of bread. She opens her refrigerator and sees that she’s down to her last tomato, and that there are only two eggs left. The greens are also gone and Shabbat is coming. She does an inventory in her head, and something isn’t right. Today is Wednesday and she went to Osher Ad on Monday—she counts on her fingers to be sure—and it just doesn’t make sense. It’s not the first time. How did Ezra get a key to the apartment after she changed the lock? And he can’t buy groceries himself? He can’t take produce from the crates that get delivered to his shawarma place each morning? Which one of the children is on his side? She thinks she knows, but she needs to check.

There’s nothing to be done. She looks out the window, peering to the left, to Ben-Zakkai Street, and sees that all the young people are wearing short sleeves, so she puts on a light sweater instead of a heavier one. It’s the end of June, but it’s chilly in the morning in Jerusalem. At least it was when she was young, so she never goes out in the morning without a sweater.

As soon as she gets to the uphill path that crosses the Train Track Park and reaches Pierre Koenig Street, it gets hard to lug the handcart she uses to bring the groceries home. She thinks about the families and how horrible it is. She feels just like she did on the day that they came to notify Etti Badihi about Dvir, as if it were yesterday. That was right at the beginning of the war and who thought then that it would go on until today, more than a year and a half later. Etti’s a strong woman who doesn’t wallow in her grief; she insisted back then on running away from the shiva and driving south to see the place at Kibbutz Hoshea where a rocket fell right on top of her youngest son. But how many women are like Etti? Ruth certainly isn’t. If it had been her son or grandson, she would have completely fallen to pieces. She knows that even though she didn’t fall to pieces during all those years of Ezra’s abuse. But that’s different. She’s lucky that she’s got mostly girls. Although today there are also women in combat and a lot of girls that Hamas, may its name be obliterated, killed and kidnapped and raped.

At the traffic light she stops to take a few deep breaths and then she turns right. The sun is already fierce and the shade is on the other side of the street, but it doesn’t make any sense to cross. At the second light she also stops for a moment because it’s red. Then she walks straight on and smiles at the guard at the entrance to the Hadar Mall. He knows her and lets her in without checking her bag and her cart. Aroma is full of retirees, men holding forth in their parliaments and women with bags from Factory 54 and Fox and Tamnoon, and the cutest are the couples drinking coffee and speaking softly with the serenity of the years after all the children have gotten on their feet and after the need to scrounge for a livelihood is behind them. She stands there and watches them. She could spend hours doing that but what’s she to do, there’s no food at home. And Ziv said that maybe she’d come by in the afternoon; she’s worried, and she’ll try to get out of her meeting early.

The way it works at Osher Ad is that they have these big smart shopping carts and while you shop you scan the barcodes on the things you pick out and then instead of waiting in line for a cashier you go to a line where there’s this big scale that weighs the cart and everything in it and then they know if you are trying to cheat or take something without paying. She’s good at arithmetic; she’s got a real head for remembering prices and comparing them even when packages are of different sizes, so she conducts a research project like Ziv’s research projects that she tells her about, she tallies in her head the price of each item she puts in the cart–the peaches look nice even if they’re expensive but she passes on the watermelon. And she buys two kilogram packages of rice and some of the brown rolls that Ziv likes and ground beef and Spark dishwashing liquid, the yellow kind, which she’s almost out of, but she doesn’t need flour, she bought that on Monday and what does Ezra have to do with flour. Before she weighs the cart, she sums it all up in her head and then she wheels the cart onto the scale. And here, proof, the cart really is heavier than the price of all the things in it, and the kid who is in charge there makes a stern face at her and calls her over to him, and she needs to take everything out and scan each thing again and he sees that she isn’t stealing anything. He mutters that something must be wrong with the system and lets her pass. What can she tell him, that it’s because of the soldiers who died? What would he say, that correlation is not causation?

She decides not to go up in the elevator and pass by Aroma on her way out to Pierre Koenig Street. She feels like walking alone from below to the Train Track Park and then home. At the corner, by the path that goes down to Mekor Hayyim Street, she sees three high school kids, two boys and a girl, wearing purple T-shirts with “Standing Together” written on them. The taller of the boys raises the girl up on his shoulders so that she can paste a round purple sticker high on a streetlight pole. The sticker says “Save the Children” in Hebrew and Arabic. Ruth stands and pants and watches them. The girl pastes the sticker and the boy lowers her and the three of them gather up their things and move on to the next pole. Ruth walks after them. They stop and turn toward her and they look a little worried that she’s going to shout at them.

“Good for you,” she says, and they seem surprised. “We have to save the children.”

“It’s just awful what’s happening in Gaza,” the shorter boy ventures.

“And you’ll all be soldiers soon,” Ruth says. “Watch out for yourselves.”

The kids look at each other.

“The children are the children in Gaza,” the girl explains. “The Palestinian children.”

“Ah,” Ruth says. “I thought …”

“Do you know how many children we’ve killed in Gaza?” the tall boy shoots back at her, as if she’s an enemy.

“So many,” Ruth agrees. “But, what can I do, I think about our children. Isn’t that more important? And Hamas, they started it. They killed so many of our children.”

“So we need to kill them?” says the tall boy, the one who lifted the girl on his shoulders.

“They forced us to,” Ruth says. “Isn’t that right?”

“That makes no sense,” the girl objects.

Ruth ponders this.

“Maybe. It needs to be checked.” She hesitates a moment and then adds: “Maybe it’s like correlation is not causation.”

It looks to Ruth like the shorter boy has no idea what that means. “Okay,” he says, drawing out the last syllable.

They reach the next pole, and after a discussion the girl insists on lifting the tall boy up on her shoulders.

“Watch out for yourselves,” Ruth says. She grips the handle of her shopping cart and pushes it down the path. Even though it’s downhill, it’s hard. The cart is really heavy and she worries about those kids who care so much about the Arab children.