Borat's Country

‘Z’ is a young man that works in our office. He is in fact still in training, although he is not a young kid any more, like most trainees are. He must be about 25 years old.
The other day, a couple of us were exchanging opinions about the performances at the Olympics in Beijing.
We talked about Oksana Chusovitina, the 33 years old Uzbek gymnast and veteran of five Olympics. It was the next day after she won the silver medal for Germany and somebody in our group asked what country was she from originally – Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan?
‘Z’ started laughing. We all looked at him. There was not necessarily a laughing matter there.
Then he told us that he thought we were joking: Kazakhstan is ‘a fictitious country in Borat’s movie, isn’t it’?
Being a Nesblandian* myself, I was very surprised, although I did not show it. ‘Z’ is a Nesblandian too and even if he is from another part of Nesblandia than I am, I think he should know better at his age. No excuses there with Google and the Information Highway so handy nowadays.
For once, I did not have to hear the stupid remark being made about Transylvania, a region of Romania that includes several counties which is considered by many as the ‘factitious country of the fictitious Dracula’.
Right now, Kazakhstan can share the honour with Transylvania. Great.

And then I recalled a similar situation dating years back.
I was taking a brief course at a college.
We had a girl in the class that had to present an assignment about multiculturalism as part of the course. She was born Afghani and still had a strong foreign accent and her English was at times quite wobbly.
Her paper had to deal with some history of her own background. When she reached a certain point, she mentioned that somebody related to her had made a studies trip to ‘Arabistan’.
The whole class laughed.
‘What?’ said the lecturer. ‘What do you mean by “Arabistan” she said, puzzled and amused. ‘ What sort of country is that?’ she said and laughed together with the class. A class of adults, I must say.
The girl blushed violently and remained quiet for few seconds while they continued enjoying themselves like a bunch of first grades at the age of 6. Then she timidly tried to explain it somehow. ‘Arabistan, she said, is a very big country’; ‘how could you not have heard of it yet’ was just implied.
As a Nesblandian, having to suffer enough humiliation over the years due to other people’s ignorance for which they tend to blame me and me only, because I am the one with an accent and not them, I was not only sympathetic but I became instantly aware of what she meant.
A quickly applied rationale leads to the understanding that since Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Tadzhikistan etc all end in ‘stan’, probably in some eastern languages that means ‘country’ or ‘state’ or something like that. Like in German, where Osterreich or Frankreich, means ‘the kingdom of East/Easterners’ = Austria or ‘the kingdom of the Francs’ respectively. Like Deutsch-land or Finn-land or Scot-land means the land of the Germans, Finns or Scots.
I concluded that Arabistan might be nothing but Saudi Arabia and I said so in a loud voice, for all to hear.
The girl looked at me with gratitude and a sigh of relief. Only than she realised that she actually pronounced the name of that country in her own language and not in English.
Nobody laughed any more but some looked at me with undisimulated aversion/irritation, a look I often get if I dare answer general questions that are addressed to a silent, unresponsive group that I am part of.