Meeting Meir in his yard where his small four-cow cattle grazes, he is quick to guide through the graveyard. He tells of how he has been a driver all of his life, and received four medals including the one of the Order of Lenin. Staying in the village and looking after the cemetery is almost a mission for Meir.

"My children asked me to move with them, but I refused. I know almost everyone who is buried here. My wife and both parents are buried here too. I was born here I will be buried here," he says.

People started to leave the village at the beginning of the 1970s, some for Baku and Goychay, a few others as far as Israel. Meir’s siblings left a long time ago as did his five children, two of them for Israel. In 2011 as his wife passed away he found himself alone - his children visit him once a year, and in between visits are just rare phone calls.

“Everyone in the village knows I am sick, and sometimes they take advantage of it,” he complains. “A few months ago a large herd of 40 cows entered and grazed in the cemetery! In the name of God, if not for me, this place would have been razed and covered with asphalt.”

All of Meir’s memories lay with the villagers now gone, and those tombs are his only connection with his Jewish heritage.