As a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, Raja Abdulrahim has made several trips into Aleppo, last returning from the city in early April after a week and a half stint. This year, she and colleague Patrick McDonnell were nominated for the Pulitzer prize in international reporting for their coverage of the Syrian conflict. Among the pieces from her latest trip was this dispatch of Aleppo’s children, who she watched water their father’s grave “in the hopes of getting more flowers to bloom there.”

Here, she paints a portrait of life in Aleppo, five months after the start of a barrel bombing campaign that has caused the exodus of thousands of the city’s remaining residents.

It’s a very odd thing when you’re actually doing your job as a reporter and scheduling interviews and meeting times against this backdrop of shelling and war. It’s an odd thing to say, “We’ll meet at three,” and know that at three a bomb might fall where you are and it might be interrupted. We didn’t go out unless there was a reason to go, unless there was an interview or a meeting or something. Whereas last time was in summer, and it was a very different time back then where you could go out, walk around. I didn’t do that as much this time because it felt like you were always on alert.

It’s definitely gotten much worse, even since last summer. Huge parts of the city are almost empty. Aleppo was a bustling city, it had neighborhoods that were well populated, and now in some of those neighborhoods you find just one or two families. Which is such an odd thing in a city like that.

Even those who say they’ve grown accustomed to it: when you actually see the helicopter hovering above you, it’s not normal. There’s fear, people are constantly looking up at the sky, you’re constantly on edge. But it speaks to the human ability to somehow adapt, to go to work or appointments. But many people were not able to adapt, and that’s why you’ve seen a huge exodus from Aleppo, both the city and suburbs. There were people who tolerated clashes and shelling and warplanes, but the barrel bombs are something else in terms of how arbitrary and destructive they are.

During the time that ISIS was a big concern, a lot of citizen journalists left. And some of them have come back. But there are many, many citizen journalists who never left. They are still on the ground, constantly working. If there’s shelling or barrel bombing they’re there. They realize that a lot of the world has stopped paying attention, and so they tend to keep Syria and Aleppo [informed about] what’s happening. A couple weeks ago they started a hashtag “Save Aleppo” campaign. One guy sent me a promo they’d made and said the goal was to get it out to the world, to the West. That was the goal. Because they understand that most people just stopped paying attention, and they’re trying to draw that attention back.

There are a lot of kids on the street selling candy or tissues; [you sense] that desperation. It’s a population that’s been decimated not just in terms of numbers but in the ability to make ends meet, to survive day to day. Just looking at the city is jarring. Empty neighborhoods are very jarring in Aleppo.

Katarina Montgomery contributed reporting.