(No) Burhan in Mirogoj

By Benny Arnas

I

People in Zagreb walked briskly that morning. Their shoes hit the damp pavement, creating a rhythmic sound that, strangely, comforted me. In the distance, the dome of Mirogoj Basilica peeked through cedar trees. I came here not to pray, but to find someone I never truly knew.

His name was Burhan H. At least, that was the name I found on an old report sheet in the university archives. At the age of twenty-five, he arrived in Zagreb after spending two weeks in Pécs, a city nestled on the slopes of the Mecsek Mountains. Burhan H had fled to Budapest following a series of exhausting events. The twenty-five-year-old man had spent just one night – a night that felt endlessly long – in Jakarta before his lover bought him a ticket to Budapest. On the plane, the memory of that painful event kept him from closing his eyes: his family home in Beliti had been raided by soldiers, and the screams were buried along with the corpses in the rubber plantation forests to the south of the regency.

No one knew why he chose Zagreb. “Why not Moscow, or Prague, like the other exiles?” asked a historian friend over the phone last night. I said nothing. To me, people exiled from their lands never really choose. They simply drift to the quietest shore fate finds for them.

At Mirogoj cemetery, I stood long before a nameless grave. Only a year: 1985. The cemetery staff said an Asian man was buried here, no family listed. He died in a rented flat in Trnje, they said, with only a page of poetry and stale bread left on his dining table.

I bowed my head. I imagined Burhan H sitting alone at a café near Glavni Station. His hand wrapped around a coffee cup, eyes staring into Zagreb’s fog. What did he long for that day? The smell of wet earth from his childhood yard in Musi Rawas? His mother’s voice picking water spinach by the well? Or just idle coffee stall chatter, curses, laughter, prayers?

A cold breeze whispered through the cedar leaves. I typed his name into my phone notes: “Burhan H. Exile. Died without a name, lived with words.”

Above me, a crow flew south. Seeking warmth, seeking home. I looked at my own heavy steps leaving his grave. Perhaps all of us are exiles in cities that do not know our names. Merely drifting, waiting for a call home from no one.

II

I left Mirogoj with heavy feet. Walked down Ilica Street, lined with bakeries and small boutiques. In every window, bright summer dresses were displayed. Life here moved on as usual. As if no foreign name had ever died quietly on this land.

I sat on a wooden bench near tram number six. The breeze carried the scent of toast and cheap cigarettes. Across the street, two old women spoke softly in Croatian. I looked up at Zagreb’s grey sky. Perhaps under skies like this, Burhan H often stood, staring at nothing.

It was said that before he died, he worked at the faculty of philosophy library. Scanning catalogue cards, transcribing quotations from Marx and Sartre for students. No one knew that he once wrote poems in Indonesian about the lover he betrayed because circumstances forced him to marry his private English student in Zagreb, or about a homeland he could no longer visit – and no longer dared to.

I pictured his flat in Trnje. A narrow room smelling of cold coffee and dusty books. A thin curtain fluttered in the morning breeze. His wooden desk crowded with notes. On his last page, perhaps his words ended with a single period. No closing sentence. No exclamation. Just a small dot, marking the end.

People in Zagreb never knew him. No Burhan listed on apartment boards. None in government employee files. Only in archive documents—tucked inside his diary—which I quietly copied last night. Burhan H. Died in silence, lived in a stranger’s record.

The tram screeched by, iron wheels crying. Passengers stared straight ahead, as if nothing mattered but today’s destination. Perhaps that is how forgetting works. Walk fast, look straight, pretend everything is fine.

III

I walked up to Gornji Grad, climbing narrow cobblestone paths towards the Museum of Broken Relationships. It stood in a cream-colored old building by the square. Tourists with cameras shuffled in, whispering in awe.

Inside, heartbreak objects sat in white glass cases. A lone high-heeled shoe. A worn teddy bear. A 90s love song CD. Each held a story of loss. I read every brief note on the walls. Lovers parting. Quiet divorces. Deaths without farewells.

Suddenly I thought: This museum should have a room for exiles. Those uprooted from their land, with no time to pack neatly, no chance to choose what keepsake to bring.

To me, Burhan H deserved a corner here. Perhaps a small Indonesian notebook with slanted script, filled with poems yearning for a home that never awaited him. Or a chipped ceramic cup he once used to brew black coffee in his cramped Trnje flat.

I read words on one museum wall: “Some relationships end without closure. You leave, or are left, carrying only the silence.”

Isn’t exile the greatest heartbreak? Not breaking from one person, but from soil, trees, house smells, the meatball vendor’s call at the alley’s end, Gambir Station’s train whistles he would never hear again.

In this museum, I understood Burhan deeper. Not just a name in hidden archives, but a broken man walking through foreign cities, writing poems to a country that no longer claimed him.

I left the museum with a heavy chest. Outside, spring sunlight gleamed on Zagreb’s red roofs. Oh, Museum of Broken Relationships, I thought. Exile is a heartbreak you can never bring home.

IV

I sat at a small café in the museum courtyard, sipping espresso from a tiny white cup. In front of me, the museum door swung open and shut, people leaving with new silences inside them.

I imagined Burhan sitting here, years ago, staring at the square while writing poems on old receipts. Perhaps he wrote of noisy Surulangun Market, Tugumulyo’s evening rain, or his mother’s kitchen filled with the pungent smell of jengkol. Mundane things irreplaceable by Croatian pretzels or Dalmatian zinfandel.

A museum curator sat at the table beside me. I gathered courage to ask about the possibility of an exile exhibition. She stared at me long, raising an eyebrow. “Exiles? Like Balkan war refugees?” she asked softly in English.

I shook my head. “No. Political exiles. They brought nothing but names and memories.”

She paused. “That’s interesting,” she finally said. “Broken Relationships isn’t just about love. It’s about countries. About homes.”

I walked back with heavy steps, before entering the museum again for the nth time. On the way, I saw old St. Mark’s Church with its blue-red mosaic roof, watching me calmly. Burhan must have walked here too, alone, carrying plastic bags of cheap bread and tomatoes for dinner.

That night, in a small hotel near the station, I recalled what I told the curator before leaving. “There is a lonelier heartbreak: becoming an exile, and finding your homeland is a house that no longer gives you a key.”

“Come back tomorrow,” she offered.

I walked away. Insha Allah, I whispered.

V

The museum was small, its white walls cool and quiet. But inside, human hearts pressed together wordlessly. A cheap plastic pen once given by a first lover. An imitation necklace never returned. A dirty panda doll left unwashed when its owner departed.

I walked slowly through the exhibits, holding my breath. Each object carried a short, suffocating story. Of a Bosnian woman leaving her mother’s mirror because she could no longer face herself after war. Of a Serbian man donating a leftover train ticket to Zagreb—one that should have taken him to his wedding, but instead took him to goodbye.

I thought, if Burhan H donated something here, it would be the key to his rented Jagakarsa house, untouched for decades. Or his old batik shirt, folded neatly in his suitcase when he left, hoping to wear it again upon returning home.

But Burhan never returned. He lived in Zagreb, stitching up his heartbreak each night. Eating stale bread and salted tomatoes while writing short poems about the Kelingi River. Imagining his mother’s stir-fried green chili aroma in Beliti. Imagining the evening prayer call echoing people home.

This museum holds humanity’s collective heartbreak. Not only of love, but of losing home itself. And Burhan H, in Zagreb’s quiet corner, was one of them.

VI

I stood long before a glass case holding a small roof tile fragment. It belonged to an old woman from Dubrovnik, who wrote: “This was part of our roof before the war destroyed it. I kept it, because beneath it I once lay beside my husband, listening to rain.”

I imagined Burhan reading that note. Perhaps he would write something similar for the museum. But instead of a roof tile, he would place a dried jasmine flower from his rented yard in Jagakarsa. He would write softly:

“This jasmine came from my rented house in South Jakarta. I picked it at dawn before flying to Yugoslavia. They say this flower calms the heart. But here, it only dries in silence, like me.”

“He was never buried in Mirogoj,” said the 29-year-old man, his voice hoarse and flat.

“Then where is Burhan buried?” I could no longer feign politeness before Burhan H’s grandson, who handed me his grandfather’s diary telling of his escape from Budapest. In Zagreb, perhaps I can finally escape their hunt, Burhan wrote on the last page of the diary I received two weeks ago. “Did you donate anything of his to the Museum of Broken Relationships… anonymously perhaps?”

“Museum…?” He pointed at the museum across this city park where we often met.

I fell silent. Yes, he could read my mind.

“May I visit his grave?”

He nodded, hope blooming in my chest. “So, where is it?”

“Here,” the man tapped his chest gently, smiling with quiet triumph.

I looked up at Zagreb’s wistful sky, imagining Burhan’s journey to build a home in a land that was nowhere. I watched his grandson walk away from the park bench, then looked at my own trembling hand, fighting off April’s chill.

Zagreb, 2019–Leiden, 2024