Two years ago, I heard an interesting piece on public radio about a one-woman play that was in the middle of a critically successful run at Manhattan Ensemble Theater. I had missed the introduction of the segment but listened raptly as the author, whose voice sounded very familiar, described how she had come to write a show about the lives of Iraqi women during the American military occupations.

My jaw hit the floor at the end of the piece, when I learned that the play, Nine Parts of Desire, was the work of Heather Raffo. She and I had been friends in high school in Michigan, ever since we were cast together in a school play. We lost touch after college, and in the intervening years Heather Raffo had become Heather Raffo. On September 29, she opened a run of the show in Washington, at Arena Stage. I happily caught up with her over a bottle of shiraz at Busboys and Poets, just after she had given a reading from the play last week.

We knew each other before the first Gulf War. I knew that your dad was from Iraq, but in my mind you were never anything but simply American, someone from my town and my school. In reviews and interviews now, you are generally called an “Iraqi-American playwright.” How has America’s interaction with Iraq changed your identity?

The press tends to find labels that are convenient and brief. Because these things are for newspapers, I have allowed myself to be called “Iraqi-American,” although I find it a bit disturbing. It is more complicated than that: I am the daughter of an Iraqi immigrant, and my father and I are both Americans. After college, I saved up some money and traveled around Europe. When I made it all the way to Turkey, I realized that I had to go to Iraq, only one border away. While I was there, I encountered women who were deeply rooted in the past of Iraq, something I felt I shared in my blood, in a deep inner part of my psyche. I didn’t know it was even there, but the Iraq War was the impetus for my discovery of that heritage.