For 22 years, Murad and Susanna Yeghyan, an Armenian farming couple, have been selling melons each summer and fall from a roadside straw kiosk located just a few kilometers away from the Azerbaijani borderline. As retail locations go, few are more dangerous. But to make money on their crops, they have no other choice.

“Twenty-four hours [a day], we are here so that we can sell the whole harvest,” elaborates Susanna Yeghyan, 56. “Every second, our life is threatened on this road. Though, there are no shootings. But, anyway, we are in front of the enemy.”

The 349-kilometer-long Yeraskh-Meghri highway runs from western Armenia, not far from the Turkish border, all the way south to the border with Iran. At its start, where the Yeghyans sell their produce, it is located just above the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan.

Other dangers exist, too. “The road is always loaded with trucks and passenger cars,” Yeghyan continues. “There was a car crash just next to us. The road is not lit up at night.”

Each time she hears car brakes squeak, she jerks herself up from her kiosk seat.