Eltaher was always well dressed. Certainly not expensively, but constantly dapper and properly attired for any occasion. Until the 1960s the tarboush or red fez, and cane with a silver plated handle, or a white umbrella in summer to protect him from the merciless sun in Egypt, were de rigueur for him. Until he died, he always wore the stiff collars that were fashionable during the early decades of the twentieth century. When he could not find them anymore in Cairo or Beirut in later years, his long-time friend, the Lebanese poet George Saidah, who lived in Paris, used to airmail the collars to him from the French capital.
