using exec to execute a system command in a new process

I am trying to spawn a process that executes a system command, while my own program still proceeds and two processes will run in parallel. I am working on linux.

I looked up online and sounds like I should use exec() family. But it doesn't work quite as what I expected. For example, in the following code, I only see "before" being printed, ,but not "done".

I am curious if I am issing anything?

#include <unistd.h>
#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

main()
{
   cout << "before" << endl;
   execl("/bin/ls", "/bin/ls", "-r", "-t", "-l", (char *) 0);
   cout << "done" << endl;
}

[UPDATE]

Thank you for your guys comments. Now my program looks like this. Everything works fine except at the end, I have to press enter to finish the program. I am not sure why I have to press the last enter?

#include <unistd.h>
#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

main()
{
   cout << "before" << endl;
   int pid = fork();
   cout << pid << endl;
   if (pid==0) {
      execl("/bin/ls", "ls", "-r", "-t", "-l", (char *) 0);
   }
   cout << "done" << endl;
}