An Arab Bedouin from Syria named Batra notes that in 1915 she was a nine-year-old girl and remembers quite well how the exhausted Armenian deportees reached the deserts of Der Zor. She tells that the Turkish gendarmes and Chechens killed many of them, and the Armenian women who were left alive, were forcibly married to Arab sheiks and foremen.

"I am 93 years old woman. I am from the Syrian deserts. In 1915, I was 9 years old and I remember well how the exiled Armenian caravans arrived in Der-Zor one after the other.

They had endured much torture. They were hungry, thirsty, in rags, and barefoot. They came and gathered near the Der-Zor bridge. We saw how the Turkish gendarmes and Chechens killed them.

The women, who survived, married our Arab sheikhs and heads of the desert villages. They became good mothers of families. Most of them changed their religion, but some of them did not. We admired the beauty of Armenian women. They had marvelous eyes. Besides, they were balanced in nature, obedient and honest. They never begged.

The Turks scattered the Armenians all over the Syrian deserts, but the Arabs pitied them and gathered them up."

Verjine Svazlian. The Armenian Genocide: Testimonies of the Eyewitness Survivors. Yerevan: “Gitoutyoun” Publishing House of NAS RA, 2011, testimony 306, p. 499.