Magda El-Ghitany enjoyed her walk into the heart of the green Merryland Park "I always love coming to the park as I can take big rounds with my bicycle, play football with my father and watch the dolphins show," said eight-year-old Omar, as he was entering the Merryland Park with his parents while holding a multi-coloured balloon that his father had just bought him at the park's gate. Indeed, Heliopolis's Merryland Park, one of Cairo's best known and widest parks, is a popular venue where every age group has been carefully catered to. During the day, lovers occupy the park's benches, where their hearts meet while the sun is casting a golden glow on the greenery, away from the pollution, traffic jams, and the noise that lie beyond the park's borders. "The park is relaxing and very inspiring," one loving couple in their mid-20s told Al-Ahram Weekly. During weekends, the scene is even more joyful and full of life as the park becomes the favourite picnic area for many families, where they spread blankets on the ground as well as their home-made picnic baskets. Their children are everywhere, running, riding bicycles and filling the aquarium seats where they happily watch the dolphins show. At night, the park is lit up and age groups, ranged from early 20s to mid-30s, occupy the wide garden's various elegant, sometimes expensive, restaurants and coffee shops. They chat, laugh, and watch huge TV screens while eating, drinking, or smoking shisha. The wide area the Merryland currently occupies was originally a place for a horse racetrack. However, during the late 1950s, when Heliopolis was becoming a residential neighbourhood and its streets were paved with the tram tracks, the idea of establishing a huge green park was presented so it could constitute a "wide green lung for Heliopolitans to help them take a fresh breath of air," Fathi Hussein, the agricultural engineer who put the design for the Merryland Park and, later, became its general manager for a long time, told the Weekly. In addition, Hussein noted, founding the park was also meant to increase the real estate value of the areas surrounding it, like Roxy and the rest of Heliopolis. But for Hussein, the Merryland was not just a park that he helped design. "For me, the Merryland is like a daughter whom I watched growing and changing over the years," Hussein said, while staring at the park's greenery, recalling his old memories. During the 1960s, the idea of "establishing a large green park was both new and challenging," Hussein remembered with a twinkle in his eyes. The Merryland was to be the first Egyptian park to be constructed on such a wide area -- 35 feddans. But bringing the park to life was far from an easy mission for Hussein. "The plan was to have some 15 engineers working on the park's design." However, due to some administrative obstacles, things did not go as planned and "I [Hussein] had to work solely on designing and constructing the park," alongside the help of two other junior assistants. Together, Hussein recalled proudly, "we worked 17 hours a day for two years straight," until the park was officially opened in July 1963, by late president Gamal Abdel-Nasser. Although he carries a deep love for the whole place, the park's greenhouse is Hussein's favourite corner. Remembering the old memories of "every rose [he] planted and witnessed grow," Hussein stated that at the beginning, "we had o bring the plants and roses we implanted in the park from Alexandria;" it was an expensive process. Therefore, Hussein decided to establish a greenhouse with hundreds of plants of rare species and would sell its surplus production to the public at affordable prices, things that are still practised by the park's greenhouse. Looking around him while taking a walk down Merryland, Hussein feels the park still preserves the initial design that he created, despite some changes. "The Casino's lake has noticeably shrunk; many cafeterias were established that did not exist before," Hussein noted. Agreeing with Hussein, an official, who currently works in the park's administration, told the Weekly that "except for the usual maintenance to the park as well as the small cafeterias," the park had maintained its original design for the past 32 years. "Adding the small cafeterias to the park was necessary because they offer fast food and soft drinks with low prices that suit people who cannot afford paying for relatively expensive meals at any of the park's restaurants," the official explained. Afaf El-Sayed, a housewife and a mother of three children agreed. "The park is near my house. My children love to come here, at least two times a week. It will be very difficult for a middle-class family to pay an average of LE100 only for soft drinks every time its members visit the park. The cafeterias sell such drinks at very affordable prices and this encourages us to visit the park more often," El-Sayed said. Some 10 years ago, the beautiful green park was noticeably neglected. Foul smells, mosquitoes and wild dogs were all over the place. But this has not been the case in the last five years. Merryland restored its glory after it was noticeably upgraded and became, again, a favourite place for picnickers. "The Merryland has always been a place for the whole family. I just hope it can remain the same forever," Hussein said while taking a long look at the park before he heads back home.
