Chapter 1 describes the ways in which Assyrians located themselves in urban centers such as Baghdad and Kirkuk, and how they negotiated around their ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic grievances, either personally or communally, within the larger Iraqi context. Communities like the Assyrians began to emerge from the periphery, disrupting the existing patriarchal order and igniting socioeconomic tensions with Arab nationalists, Baʿthists, and conservatives, who felt particularly threatened by those affiliated with communism and the left – notably minorities and women. In 1959 violence erupted in Mosul and Kirkuk, and in 1963 a right-wing coup toppled the Qasim government, paving the way for the rise of the Baʿth Party.

Chapter 2 shifts the focus from urban centers to the rural north during the early Iraqi republican period (1961–75). The chapter complicates the traditional understanding of the Kurdish uprising as an exclusively nationalist movement, demonstrating that Assyrians, as well as Communists who survived the coup, were significant actors in this conflict. Starting in 1961, Assyrians like Margaret George joined the Kurdish opposition, and local Assyrian parties moved north after being denied registration in Baghdad. As the civil war continued, cooperation between the Kurds and Assyrians expanded transnationally. But the civil war had devastating consequences: depopulation of the countryside, the destruction of villages, and the loss of religious and cultural sites in northern Iraq.