title: json.loads with escape characters
body: <p>I'm trying to convert this string into python dict:</p>
  <pre><code>q = '{&quot;request_body&quot;: &quot;{\\x22username\\x22:\\x222\\x22,\\x22password\\x22:\\x226\\x22,\\x22id\\x22:\\x22e2cad174-736e-3041-cf7e\\x22, \\x22FName\\x22:\\x22HS\\x22}&quot;, &quot;request_method&quot;: &quot;POST&quot;}'
  </code></pre>
  <p>when I do <code>json.loads(a)</code> it giving me an error <code>simplejson.decoder.JSONDecodeError: Invalid \escape: line 1 column 19 (char 19)</code> . So than I decided to convert <code>\x22</code> into  <code>&quot;</code>. I followed suggestion from <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18219398/how-to-convert-characters-like-x22-into-string">this</a> question.</p>
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; q.decode('string_escape')
  '{&quot;request_body&quot;: &quot;{&quot;username&quot;:&quot;2&quot;,&quot;password&quot;:&quot;6&quot;,&quot;id&quot;:&quot;e2cad174-736e-3041-cf7e&quot;, &quot;FName&quot;:&quot;HS&quot;}&quot;, &quot;request_method&quot;: &quot;POST&quot;}'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; 
  </code></pre>
  <p>But after that <code>&quot;{&quot;</code> part is invalid.
  So my question is what are the possible ways to convert string <code>q</code> into a python dict?</p>