A day in Beirut with Charbel Haber from Scrambled Eggs _ Lebanon

text by NEGAR AZIMI photography by AYLA HIBRI and JOE KESROUANI   A Lebanese friend once told me she had sex dreams about two people only: Hassan Nasrallah and Catherine Deneuve. The pairing of the hirsute Hezbollah leader and the actress from Belle de Jour, scandalously incongruous as it seems, in my mind perfectly captures Beirut. How to begin to talk about a city that invites so many pre-fab clichés? Lingering over the delirious contradictions and contrasts — both real and psychic — is a favorite pastime of journalists in particular, for what is Beirut if not a mille-feuille of dozens of classes, confessions, and alliances — branché cosmopolitan elites and shabby overcrowded southern suburbs, haute couture and Hezbollah? I first met the musician Charbel Haber a decade ago in a smoke-filled cave called Torino. It was the kingdom in which we all gathered, and Charbel, the rail-thin boy with the…