Two days later Mme. Roth and her escort approached the crossing of the river Tokma-Su, at the little village Keumer-Khan. There were tracks on the plain which showed the party they sought had passed that way but a little while before. Suddenly down the road toward them came an unclothed girl, running madly and screaming in terror. When she came near Mme. Roth and recognized her, the girl cried, “Teacher, teacher, save me! Save me!”
The girl, whose name was Martha, and whose parents were rich people of Zeitoun, threw herself on the ground at her teacher’s feet and clasped them. “Save me! Save me!” she continued to scream. Mme. Roth gave her drops of brandy from a bottle she had carried with her, and tried to quiet her. Two zaptiehs from the guard which the bey had sent with the school girls came running up. When Martha saw them she went mad again and became unconscious. The zaptiehs tried to take possession of her limp body, but Mme. Roth defied them. Her escort persuaded the zaptiehs to go away. When Mme. Roth knelt again by the girl she was dead. Marks on her body and bruises and wounds and her torn hair were evidences of the struggle she had made to save herself.
Mme. Roth hurried on. She heard more screams as she neared the river banks. She came upon two zaptiehs, sitting on the sand, prodding with a pointed stick the bare shoulders of a girl whom they had buried in the earth above her elbows. This was a favorite pastime of the zaptiehs of the Euphrates provinces. They had commanded the girl to submit to them quietly and she had fought them. To punish her and break her spirit they buried her that way and tortured her. She screamed with pain and fright, and this amused them greatly. When they wished the zaptiehs would take her out, and then bury her again. It was from such torture as this Martha had escaped.
The soldiers of Mme. Roth’s escort rescued the girl, at her command. Mme. Roth left her with three soldiers and crossed the river. She could hear screams from the other side. Once zaptiehs on the raft taking them across the river broke into a loud guffaw. The oarsmen steered the raft so as to escape two floating objects, and it was these which amused them. Mme. Roth saw the bodies of two of her girls floating down the river from where the screams came.
“Look—look there,” shouted a laughing zaptieh; “two more Christians whom their Christ forgot!”
On the other side Mme. Roth found all who were left of her sixty or more pupils—only seventeen. Their lives were saved only because the zaptiehs had become weary. They were, too, the least pretty of the original party. Mme. Roth took them all back to Malatia, where the Kaimakam insisted that she house them. They were living there in constant fear of being taken away again when I was taken from the city.
It was said by those who knew, that Mme. Roth refused to receive Eimen Effendi when he called upon her after her return with her surviving pupils. It is said she sent word to him that she was no longer German, and would ask no protection except that which she could buy with gold liras as long as she could obtain them from her relatives.
In every open space in the city and in every empty building Armenian refugees were camped, hungry, footsore and dying, with little food or water. In all our company there were not ten loaves of bread when we entered the city. When we asked at the wells of Turks for water we were spat at, and if soldiers were near the Turks would call them to drive us away. Each day thousands of the refugees were taken away, and each day thousands of others arrived from the north.
Inside the city there was no attempt to care for the arriving exiles. Some of the men in our party finally led the way to a great building which had been a barracks, but in which many thousands of Christians had taken refuge. We seldom ventured out on the streets, for Turkish boys and Kurds and Arabs thronged the streets and threw stones or sticks at us, or, in the case of girls as young as I, carried them into Turkish shops or low houses, and there outraged them.
When we had passed the second day in Malatia I could rest no longer without seeking my mother—hoping that she and the Armenians of Tchemesh-Gedzak might be among the other refugees. I went into the street at night and went from place to place where exiles were herded. Nowhere could I find familiar faces—people from my own city.