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In theory, things have gotten better since then -- the supreme court of Bangladesh upheld religious freedom in 2010. But it's also a country that is nearly 90 percent Muslim, and Islamic studies courses are very much mandatory. (Strangely, we were taught evolution in school, from sixth grade biology on. So there's that, I guess.)

I had come out as an atheist to some friends before the laws changed, but I kept that fact secret because did you read that thing about the pigeons? But being a teenager, what I couldn't avoid was getting into an argument with my teacher. It didn't take long for one of my classmates to blab that I was a non-believer. That was the beginning of a sequence of events that would lead to the whole "getting shot and fleeing the country" thing a few years down the line.

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So yes, bullying does get worse than this.

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But at the time, I just had to settle for a good beating. Teachers could cane the shit out of students in Bangladesh until 2010, and he did just that, for like 15 minutes straight. And that wasn't the end of it. We got death threats. I have a little brother, and someone sent a letter to my dad saying they knew when he got off from school and they'd be coming after him for the crime of being related to me. My dad had to hire bodyguards for three months. And I felt terrible, because this was all my fault.