Photo by Erin O’Brien.

Bukhara, Uzbekistan, looks a bit like Disney World. At its center, it’s perfectly clean, with burger joints and colorful lights dancing off of a man-made pond. Well-dressed, well-fed people lounge in the sunlight, sipping chai, or beer, and their pudgy children dip their toes in the water while their parents are otherwise occupied. It’s an oasis, and, for a moment, you can forget that it sits in the middle of a country with a personal GDP near that of India. And then you start walking.

Any local asked where the “mahallah yahoodi” (Jewish Quarter) is will give you a vague hand gesture, or a half-hearted “anja” (there). Sometimes they’ll even shrug their shoulders, or just say “nazdeek” (near). It’s a place that, to them, means no more than a couple streets with a single, dilapidated synagogue. But the mahallah is what remains of a once thriving Bukharan Jewish community. In its maze-like streets lived thousands and thousands of Persian-speaking followers of David, once the rulers of the silk road, who’d suffered greatly at the hand of the Soviet Union. And now, a shrug.

At its center should be the fabled Bukharan Jewish cemetery, resting place of thousands upon thousands of the now diminished tribe. But now, down filthy road after filthy road, once great wealth and power is reduced to splintered doors and crumbling roofs. The air smells like garbage and feces and smoke. Children run by, their bare feet stained black. They smile, but their mothers shoot pained looks from open windows.

By the time you reach a landfill, resignation feels imminent. The smell of garbage is overwhelming, and the air is thick with woodsmoke. But a small girl playing in the dirt knows the way. She points to the landfill. Perhaps she is making a joke. She’s stone-faced. She gestures again, this time beyond the landfill. And then you see it.

Among the garbage, its blue dome gleams. In contrast to its surroundings, the cemetery’s entrance is pristine, with towering sandstone walls trimmed in blue. Without the Star of David on the top of the dome, it could easily be mistaken for a mosque.

A kindly groundskeeper, emaciated and toothless, guards the door. But then he steps aside, revealing his bounty. Graves stretch for what seems like eternity. Around the periphery, they’re new. Shiny. Adorned with race cars, even. Their Stars of David shine pridefully in the afternoon light. They’re gleaming, unbroken, sometimes even flower-adorned, all with death dates later than 1990.

The land beyond the outer perimeter, though, looks empty. It’s dry with patches of yellow grass and covered in broken, uneven stones, marking the graves of those who died when their religion was a sin. They’re nameless. Identical in their broken faces, crumbling into the garbage and slum that surrounds them.

Staring at the headstones, looking for some indication of whose they are, reveals nothing. Squinting to try and make out some detail, some writing, is fruitless. Lingering makes the groundskeeper visibly uneasy, the desert sun is scorching, and no matter what, the stones remain anonymous, taking with them their lost culture. It’s tempting to stay, for fear that to leave means to forget. But eventually, there’s no other choice but to go. Back to the pond and the beers and the Disney World, pushing this forgotten world further into the past.