Found and Lost

I was told to write two aprox. 500 word stories, and this is one of them. I had already done a dialogue exercise and a description of one of the characters from two points of view, so I was too fond of them to let them go. My dialogue exercise was between these two cousins (in a culture where marriage between cousins is appropriate and even preferable because you can get to know them more ahead of time), but I left it hanging at the first two lines of this story. This story is the continuation. I'm posting it alone because hopefully you can understand it without the background--although I may post the background at another time.                                                        

                                                                         Found and Lost

            “Don’t worry. I won’t tell your father. I don’t wish to shame our families.”
            “Tell me what?” a voice rumbled. Asma’s breath caught. Her pulse pounded a war drum, and she tucked a midnight strand of hair into her purple hijab, or headscarf, as she turned. Check-out scanners cheeped in the distance, and a huddle of women in black abayas brushed past them, leaving behind a scented trail of incense.
            “Alsalamalakum, Abi,” Asma murmured. She examined the cracks in the mall’s tiled floor.
           “Tell me what?” her father’s voice hardened. Asma forced her eyes up the length of his white dishdasha, past his beard and into his eyes. They steamed like burning wet asphalt.
           She glanced at her cousin Ahmed standing in the doorway of his pharmacy s yhop. His face was smooth, untroubled by the storm his words had caused. He would be calm, Asma thought. He’s not the one about to lose everything that matters to him. He returned her gaze, his eyes murky ponds.
             “Tell—me—what?”
             “Well,” she said. Two little boys shied past, hand in hand. One wore shoes that squeaked like rubber ducks.
             “She means to say that we have been meeting in secret—at night,” Ahmed said.
             “What? Is this true?” The steam intensified.
            Asma did not answer. She stared at Ahmed.
           “Oh yes,” Ahmed nodded, straightening the embroidered kumah on his head. “We have managed to keep it hidden until now.”
           “Asma, I’m surprised at you! You know our ways. This is not how it is done,” her father sighed. “It must be that American English teacher.”
           “No, actually, she told Asma to stop seeing me. She’s the only one who knows. Asma would have listened to her long ago, but I am very—insistent. It’s over though,” Ahmed shook his head, “she told me last night that she’d stop meeting me. She has principles. She must study hard in English class if she’s going to get that scholarship to study in university in the U.S.A.”
            “Is this true?” her father asked. The asphalt had cooled.
            Asma kept staring at Ahmed. “Why—” she stopped as he nodded at her, “yes.”
            “You know what this means, don’t you? You may not see my daughter.”
            Ahmed bowed his head. “I understand.”
            “Come, Asma,” taking her elbow, her father steered her away. The floor blurred past.
            What just happened? She had never met Ahmed alone before today. She had been meeting another boy—from English class; Ahmed had seen them together last night. If her father had known, he would have removed her from the class immediately, and her dreams to attend university in the U.S.A. would have disappeared forever. But why did Ahmed take the blame?
           Last week, when she brought in coffee and dates for both of their fathers, they stopped talking. There could only be one reason Ahmed had lied. Now that all of her dreams remained open to her, she glanced back toward a lone figure in the doorway of a pharmacy shop. One dream was lost forever. A dream she never even knew she had.