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Uday and Qusay: Just Two Crazy Kids in Love

Uday and Qusay Hussein were meant for each other. And they clung to their forbidden passion as desperately as they fought against insurmountable odds.

Uday stood a petite 4'11" in his stocking feet and weighed a mere 90 pounds. He was pretty with taffy-colored hair that glistened red in the sunlight and a fair complexion that tended to freckle. He always turned heads.

Qusay was larger: 5'7" and 130 pounds. He slicked down his thick black hair in the style of the day, often parting it on the left. His eye color matched his hair. People found his sweet talk quite disarming.

It was love at first sight.

Sometimes traveling alone, sometimes with a gang, the pair terrorized banks and businesses in a crime wave spanning a thousand square miles of oil-rich countryside.

Those who read about them thrilled to their "Robin Hood" exploits. Anybody who thumbed their nose at authority was living out a secret fantasy of a large part of the public.

Even more than their insurgence against their status in life was their devotion to one another. With law enforcement constantly at their heels, sometimes literally within inches, time and time again one risked his own life to protect the other.

They loved to pose together, embracing or kissing, or wielding firearms in a self-parody of the gangster image they had earned, having other gang members take their photograph.

It was, perhaps, fascination with this fairy-tale romance that encouraged so many "ordinary" people to help the pair evade capture for so long. It is said that few could help but be caught up in the irresistible melodrama.

But looks and personality couldn't charm the savage hail of bullets from authorities waiting for them in deadly ambush early one morning.

A witness described the gruesome scene: "My ears were ringing from the hailstorm of bullets - the clank of steel-jacketed metal tearing steel. When the firing subsided, Qusay was slumped forward, the back of his head a mat of blood. Then I saw Uday stumble through a bullet-riddled door. The impression will be with me forever - the scent of expensive perfume mixed with the sickly smell of gunpowder."

The star-crossed lovers always knew they were going to die. A poem found in Uday's delicate handwriting makes this all too clear:

"Someday they will go down together
And their bodies will be on display.
To few it is grief, to the law a relief,
But it's death for Uday and Qusay."

   This article is satire from The Specious Report. This is a parody and not affiliated in any way with True Detective.