It took Nigerian officials weeks to publish the names of all the students Boko Haram kidnapped from a boarding school in the village of Chibok four years ago, on the night of April 14. Once they did, the numbers were staggering.

The list quickly circulated among the grieving parents searching for their daughters, some setting out on motorbikes to confront the Islamist militants who had stormed the school, loaded the girls into trucks and hauled them away at gunpoint. Soldiers used the list, too, as they combed the countryside for the missing students, marching through the forest, dispatching jets and enlisting the help of foreign militaries. Negotiators checked the names as they bartered with militants for the girls’ release. And the list became an inspiration for protesters hundreds of

kilometers away in the capital, who kept marching for the girls’ return, day after day.

«As I began to read each name, my resolve strengthened,» said Oby Ezekwesili, a former education minister who led protests. «They were not just statistics. These were real human beings.»

Far away in America, France, South Korea and elsewhere, public figures and celebrities joined the cause. Bring back our girls, they demanded.

For years, the teenagers remained missing, transforming from girls into women, lost to a band of extremists known for beating and raping its captives. And then, many of their names were joyfully crossed off the list. «I’m ‘back,’ as they say,» said Hauwa Ntakai, one of the Chibok students.

Nearly four years after they were abducted, more than 100 of the students from Chibok now live on a pristine university campus in northeastern Nigeria, their days filled with math and English classes, karaoke and selfies, and movie nights with popcorn.

The government negotiated for the release of many of the Chibok students, who were set free over the last year and a half. A few others were found roaming the countryside, having escaped. But more than 100 of their former classmates are still held by Boko Haram. About a dozen are thought to be dead.

«I’m happy,» said Ms. Ntakai, who was Number 169 on the list. Now, she is a 20-year-old student who rises at dawn for Saturday yoga class and argues about the benefits and dangers of social media during debate night at the university. «But I’m thinking about my sisters who are still in the back,» in Boko Haram’s clutches, she said.

Nigeria is in its ninth year of war with Boko Haram, a group that has killed and kidnapped thousands of civilians. In many respects, the Chibok students were just another set of its victims. Many of the young women now consider themselves the lucky ones. The vast majority of Boko Haram’s victims will remain anonymous. Many of their families will never even know what happened to them. But the Chibok girls had names. Saratu Ayuba. Ruth Amos. Comfort Habila. Esther Usman. And from a few weeks after they were taken — when Boko Haram broadcast images of its captives, covered from head to toe in long, dark gowns — they had faces. Teenage students suddenly became the unwitting representatives of all the dead and missing victims of a crisis.

They became the daughters of Nigeria, and more broadly daughters of the whole world, embraced as though they belonged to everyone. «When the Chibok abduction happened, it was the articulation of this whole saga,» said Saudatu Mahdi, a co-founder of the Bring Back Our Girls movement. «They became a rallying point.»

But the freed students also bear the burden of that celebrity. They attend a private university that educates the children of the Nigerian elite. But restrictions on them are tight. They are not allowed to leave campus without an escort. They can’t have visitors without special permission. And though some gave birth during captivity, their children are not allowed to stay with them.

In fact, the young women have rarely seen their families since they were freed from Boko Haram. As soon as they were released, the women were whisked to Abuja, the capital, where they spent weeks in the government’s custody, questioned for information that could help find their still-missing classmates — and to satisfy officials that they had not grown loyal to Boko Haram.

Security agents warned the young women not to talk about their time with militants, arguing that it might jeopardize the safety of the students still held captive. Forget about the past and move forward, they were told. For months, their access to their parents was severely restricted. They weren’t allowed to leave the bland government building that was their dormitory. Even today, their only regular connection to their families is by phone.

Last summer, officials at the American University of Nigeria traveled to Abuja to meet with the government. Back in 2014, the university had taken in about 20 students from Chibok who had been kidnapped by Boko Haram but had managed to escape within hours. Administrators wanted to take the newly freed women, too. The idea was to help them catch up on their studies, reunite them with their former classmates and prepare them for college life.

Now the Chibok students’ lives are highly structured. They are considered high-profile targets. And as public figures, officials fear, they are vulnerable to exploitation. «They will not be the normal people they were before they were abducted,» Ms. Mahdi said.

Officials at the university had no experience educating a large group of former hostages. But neither did anyone else. «We’ll take them all and figure it out,» the university’s president, Dawn Dekle, an American, recalled thinking at the time. «They were traumatized as a group. Their healing has to be in a group.»

At the university, officials scrambled to prepare for the students, renovating a dormitory so they all could be housed together. The assistant dean of student affairs became the women’s de facto principal. A therapist in the United States, who had counseled some of the early escapees from the kidnapping, was recruited to work as the students’ psychologist.

Last September, more than 100 of the students arrived. Some of the other students were frightened that Boko Haram would come for the Chibok women again, especially at a university representing the sort of Western education that Boko Haram has condemned. Others worried that the women could be terrorists themselves.

After arriving on campus, the women were escorted to the cafeteria for their first meal. They drew stares from the other students. «I could tell they were not feeling comfortable,» said Reginald Braggs, a former United States Navy Reserve Officers’ Training Corps instructor who is in charge of the program for the Chibok students. Administrators decided to let them eat in their dorm.

All in their 20s now, the women are in a program that sometimes seems designed for elementary students. Classrooms are decorated with pictures of Spider-Man and basic multiplication tables. Messages of positive thinking are plastered on every wall: Never give up. Believe in yourself. Shine like stars. The women seemed relaxed and joyful on a recent Sunday morning. Raymond Obindu, a charismatic local pastor, keeps his sermons for the women more uplifting than the ones he usually delivers.

«They’ve seen hell together,» said Somiari Demm, the psychologist who counsels the women. «They share the extensive narrative that no one else does.» The women told their parents that they had endured periods of hunger while with Boko Haram. They were made to cook and clean for fighters. Some were raped. One is missing part of a leg from injuries suffered with Boko Haram.

Ntakai Keki, 60, said his daughter Hauwa had told him that she was once lashed 30 times with a cane. She told him that she saw the dead bodies of children who were being held hostage and witnessed fighters die from aerial bombings.

University officials do not let journalists ask the women about their experiences with the militants. «They’re grown women by American standards,» Mr. Braggs said. «Even physically they are grown women. But look at their social development. They’re still very vulnerable.»

«I’m very, very cautious about people thinking I’m overprotective,» he added. «I don’t think they’re children. But there’s a certain responsibility I’ve been given.»

At the university, the women are instructed to speak only English, a language most of them struggle with (they grew up speaking Hausa and local languages). Most of the people in charge of the women can’t communicate with them in their own languages.

One student, Glory Dama, wants to take university classes, return to Chibok and be a nurse to help her community. Another, Rhoda Peter, wants to be a lawyer. «I know I’m in a place where nobody will chase me and do something wrong to us,» said Ms. Peter, 22. «They are here to help us.»

Grace Hamman said she took comfort during her time in captivity in the knowledge that she hadn’t been forgotten.

«I heard on the radio people were crying for us and were concerned,» she recalled. «I thank everyone for what they did for us.»

Traumatized as a group, and trying to recover as a group.