When I was walking through Oxford around midnight after an evening event that offered unsatisfying hors d’oeuvres, I stopped at a kebab food truck because it was the only place open en route to my apartment (and at that hour, there was no line). But I was not served: The man working there told me to come back and order once I was wearing a hijab. The remark was so unexpected that I couldn’t think of anything to say other than “okay,” and I walked home hungry and stunned. The encounter could have been grounds for a sex- or religious-discrimination case, but it was a he-said-she-said scenario, so it became only another painful anecdote about Britain’s degeneration.
During my two years in England for my master’s degree, I grew increasingly alarmed by signs of possible civilizational crisis. Suboptimal living conditions — low salaries, high taxes, insufficient housing, bad health care — are sources of frustration among the English, especially young adults. Yet these are symptoms of a struggling nation, not necessarily one that is terminally ill. The real reason to wonder whether the United Kingdom will exist as we know it in 50 years is that parts of it are already unrecognizable.
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